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XOVELL’S 


LIBRARYSlTlCOGUli 




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51. 

62. 

63. 

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58. 

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60. 
61. 


Hyperion, by H. W, Longfellow.. 20 
Outre-Mer, by H. W. Longfellow. 20 

The Happy Boy, by BjOrnson 10 

Arne, by BjOrnson .....10 

Frankenstein: by Mrs. Shelley. . . 10 

The Last of tne Mohicans 20 

Clytie, by Joseph Hatton 20 

The Moonstone, by Collins, P^t 1. 10 
The Moonstone, by Collins, P’tll. 10 
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. 20 

The Coming Race, by Lytton 10 

Leila, by Lord.Lytton 10 

The Three Spaniards, by Walker. 20 
TheTricks of the Greek8Unveiled.20 
L’Abbe Constantin, by Hale vy.. 20 
Freckles, by R. F. Redcliff . . . .20 

The Dark Colleen, by Harriett Jay. 20 
They Were Married! by Walter 

Besant and James Rice 10 

Seekers after God, by Farrar 20 

The Spanish Nun, by DeQuincey.lO 

The Green Mountain Boys 20 

Fleurette, by Eugene Scribe 20 

Second Thoughts, by Broughton. 20 
The New Magdalen, by Collins.. 20 

Divorce, by Margaret Lee 20 

Life of Washington, by Henley. .20 
Social Etiquette, by Mrs. Saville.15 
Single Heart and Double Face. .10 

Irene, by Carl Detlef 20 

Vice Versa, by F. Anstey ^ 

Ernest Maltravers, by Lord Lytton20 
The Haunted House and Calderon 
. the Courtier, by Lord Lytton. . 10 
John Halifax, by Miss Mulock. . .20 

800 Leagues on the Amazon 10 

The Cryptogram, by Jules Verne.lO 

Life of Marion, by Horry... 20 

Paul and Virginia 10 

Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens. .20 

The Hermits, by Kingsley 20 

An Adventure in Thule, and Mar- 
riage of Moira Fergus, Black .10 

A Marriage in High Life 20 

Robin, by Mrs. Parr 20 

Two on a Tower, by Thos. Hardy. 20 
Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson. ... 10 
Alice; or, the Mysteries, being 
Part II. of Ernest Maltravers.. 20 
Duke of Kandos, by A. Mathey...20 

Baron Munchausen 10 

A Princess of Thule, by Black.. 20 
The Secret Despatch, by Grant, 20 
Early Days of Christianity, by 

Canon Farrar, D D , Part I 20 

Early Days of Christianity, Pt. 11.20 
Vicar of Wakefield, by Goldsmith. 10 
Progress and Poverty, by Henry 

George 20 

The Sj)y, by Cooper 20 

Ea'^t Lynne, by Mrs, Wood... 20 
A Strange Story, by Lord Lytton... 20 

Adam Bede, by Eliot, Parti 15 

Adam Bede, Part II 15 

The Golden Shaft, by Gibbon. . . .20 

Portia, by The Duchess. 20 

Last Days of Pompeii, by Lytton., 20 
The Two Duchesses, by Mathey. .20 
Tom Brown’s School Days 20 


62. The Wooing by Mrs. Alex-'“^‘ 

' ander. Parti 15 

The Wooing O’t, Part II 15 

63. The Vendetta, bv Balzac 20 

64. Hypatia, by Chas. kingHley,P’t 1. 15 
Hypatia, by Kingsley, Part 11. ... 16 

65. Selma, by Mrs. J. G. Smith 15 

66. Margaret and her Bridesmaids. .20 

67. Horse Shoe Robinson, Part I. ... 15 
Horse Shoe Robinson, Part II. . .15 

68. Gulliver’s Travels, by Swift 20 

69. Amos Barton, by George Eliot. . . 10 

70. The Berber, by W. E. M^o 20 

71. Silas Marner. by George Eliot. . .10 

72. The Queen of the County 20 

73. Life of Cromwell, by Hood... 15 

74. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. 20 

75. Child’s History of England 20 

76. Molly Bawn, by The Duchess. . .20 ( 

77. Pillone, bv William BergsOe 15 

78. Phyllis, by The Duchess 20 

79. Romola, by Geo. Eliot, Part I. . .15 
Romola, by Geo. Eliot, Part II. .15 

80. Science in Short Chapters 20 

81. Zanoni, by Lord Lytton 20 

82. A Daughter of Heth 20 

83. The Right and Wrong Uses of 

the Bible, R. Heber Newton. . .20 

84. N'ght and Morning, Pt. 1 15 

Night and Morning. Part II 15 

85. Shandon Bella, by Wm. Black. ,20 

86. Monica, by the Duchess lO 

87. Heart and Science, by Collins... 20 

88. The Golden Calf, by Braddon...20 

89. The Dean’s Daughter 20 

90. Mrs. Geoffrey, by The Duchess.. 20 

91. Pickwick Papers, Part 1 20 

Pickwick Papers, Part IT.... 20 

92. Airy, Fairy Lilian, The Duche.s8.20 

93. McLeod of Dare, by Wm. Black.20 

94. Tempest Tossed, by Tilton. P't I 20 
Tempest Tossed, by Tilton, P’t II 20 

95. Letters from High Latitudes, by ; 

Lord Dufferin 20 ' 

96. Gideon Fleyce, by Lucy 20 ! 

97. India and Ceylon, by E. Hteckel . .20 I 

98. The Gypsy Queen 20 

99. The Admiral’s Ward 20 

100. Mraport.byE L. Bynner, P’t I . .15 , 

Nimport, bvE. L Bynner, PtII.15 

101. Harry Holbrooke 20 

102. Tritons, by E. L Bynner, P’t I. . .15 
Tritons, by E. L. Bynner, P 1 1 1 . . 15 

103. Let Nothing You Dismay, by 

Walter Besant lO 

104. Lady Audley’s Secret, by Miss 

M. E. Braddon 20 

105. Woman’s Place To-day, by Mrs. 

Lillie Devereux Blake 20 

106. Dunallan, by Kennedy, Parti. . .15 
Dunallan, by Kennedy, Part II. .15 

107. Housekeeping and Home-male-^ 

ing, by Marion Harland 15 

108. No New Thing, by W’. E. Norris. 20 

109. The Spoopendyke Papers 20 

no. False Hopes, byGoldwin Smith. 15 

111. Labor and CapUal 20 

112. Wanda, by Onida, Part 1 15 

Wanda, by Ouida, Part II 15 


( 


THE 

BOOK OF- SNOBS, 


BY ONE OF THEMSELVES. 


8 


THE BOOH OF BNOBS. 


handle, a goose, or a lady’s tippet — a fellow comes saunto 
ing out from behind the side-scenes with the very article in 
question. 

Again, when men commence an undertaking, they always 
are prepared to show that the absolute necessities of the world 
demanded its completion. — Say it is a railroad : the directors 
begin by stating that “ A more intimate communication between 
Bathershins and Derrynane Beg is necessary for the advance- 
ment of civilization, and demanded by the multitudinous .accla- 
mations of the great Irish people.” Or suppose it is a news- 
paper : the prospectus states that “ At a time when the Church 
is in danger, threatened from without by savage fanaticism and 
miscreant unbelief, and undermined from within by dangerous 
Jesuitism and suicidal Schism, a Want has been universally 
felt — a suffering people has looked abroad — for an Ecclesi- 
astical Champion and Guardian. A body of Prelates and 
Gentlemen have therefore stepped forward in this our hour 
of danger, and determined on establishing the Beadle news- 
paper,” &c., &c. One or other of these points at least is in- 
controvertible : the public wants a thing, therefore it is sup- 
plied with it ; or the public is supplied with a 'thing, therefore 
it wants it. 

I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that 
I had a work to do — a Work, if you like, with a great W ; a 
Purpose to fulfil ; a chasm to leap into, like Curtius, horse & 
foot ; a Great Social Evil to Discover and to Remedy. That 
Conviction Has Pursued me for Years. It has Dogged me in 
the Busy Street ; Seated Itself By Me in The Lonely Study ; 
Jogged My Elbow as it Lifted The Wine-cup at The Festive 
Board ; Pursued me through the Maze of Rotten Row ; Fol- 
lowed me in Far Lands. On Brighton’s Shingly Beach, or 
Margate’s Sand, the Voice Outpiped the Roaring of the Seap 
it Nestles in my Nightcap, and It Whispers, ‘‘Wake, Slumberer, 
thy Work Is Not Yet Done.” Last Year, By Moonlight, in the 
Colosseum, the Little Sedulous Voice Came To Me and Said, 
“ Smith or Jones ” (The Writer’s Name is Neither Here or 
There), “ Smith or Jones, my fine fellow, this is all very well, 
but you ought to be at home writing your great work on 
SNOBS.” 

When a man has this sort of vocation it is all nonsense at 
tempting to elude it. He must speak out to the nations ; he 
must nnbus7n himself, as Jeames would say, or choke and die 
“ Mark to yourself ” I have often mentally exclaimed to your 


PkEFA TOR Y REMAR J^S. 


9 


humble servant, ‘‘ the gradual way in which you have been pre- 
pared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity to enter 
upon your great labor. First, the World was made : then, as a 
matter of course. Snobs ; they existed for years and years, and 
were no more known than America. But presently , — ingens pate- 
bat tellus ^ — the people become darkly aware that there was such 
a race. Not above five-and-twenty years since, a name, an ex- 
pressive monosyllable, arose to designate that race. That name 
has spread over England like railroads subsequently : Snobs 
are known and recognized throughout an Empire on which I 
am given to understand the Sun never sets. Punch appears at 
the ripe season, to chronicle their history : and the individual 
comes forth to write that history in PunchP^ 

I have (and for this gift I congratulate myself with a Deep 
and abiding Thankfulness) an eye for a Snob. If the Truthful 
is the Beautiful, it is beautiful to study even the Snobbish ; to 
track Snobs through history, as certain little dogs in Hampshire 
hunt out truffles ; to sink shafts in society and come upon rich 
veins of Snob-ore. Snobbishness is like Death in a quotation 
from Horace, which I hope you never have heard, beating 
with equal foot at poor men’s doors, and kicking at the gates of 
Emperors.” It is a great mistake to judge of Snobs lightly, and 
think they exist among the lower classes merely. An immense 
percentage of Snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of 
this mortal life. You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of 
Snobs ! to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob. I myself 
have been taken for one. 

When I was taking the waters at Bagnigge Wells, and living 
at the ‘imperial Hotel” there, there used to sit opposite me 
at breakfast, for a short time, a Snob so insufferable that I felt 
I should never get any benefit of the waters so long as he re- 
mained. His name was Lieutenant-Colonel Snobley, of a certain 
dragoon regiment. He wore japanned boots and mustaches : 
he lisped, drawled, and left the “ r’s ” out of his words : he was 
always flourishing about, and smoothing his lackered whiskers 
with a huge flaming bandanna, that filled the room with an odor 
of musk so stifling that I determined to do battle with that 
Snob, and that either he or I should quit the Inn. I first 
began harmless conversations with him ; frightening him ex- 
ceedingly, for he did not know what to do when so attacked, 
and had never the slightest notion that anybody would take such 
a liberty with him as to speak first : then I handed him the 

* These papers were originally published in that popular periodical* 


lO 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


paper : then, as he would take no notice of these advances, I 
used to look him in the face steadily and — and use my fork in 
the light of a toothpick. After two mornings of this practice, 
he could bear it no longer, and fairly quitted the place. 

Should the Colonel see this, will he remember the Gent who 
asked him if he thought Publicoaler was a fine writer, and drove 
him from the Hotel with a four-pronged fork ? 


THE SNOB PLAYFULLY DEALT WITIL 


II 


CHAPTER I. ; 

THE SNOB PLAYFULLY DEALT WITH. 

There are relative and positive Snobs. I mean by posi- 
tive, such persons as are Snobs everywhere, in all companies, 
from morning till night, from youth to the grave, being by 
Nature endowed with Snobbishness — and others who are Snobs 
only in certain circumstances and relations of life. 

For instance : I once knew a man who committed before me. 
an act as atrocious as that which I have indicated in the last 
chapter as performed by me for the purpose cf disgusting 
Colonel Snobley ; viz. : the using the fork in the guise of a tooth- 
pick. I once, I say, knew a man who, dining in my company 
at the “ Europa Coffee-house,’’ (opposite the Grand Opera, and,' 
as everybody knows, the only decent place for dining at Naples,) 
ate pease with the assistance of his knife. He was a person 
with whose society I was greatly pleased at first — indeed, we 
had met in the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and were subse- 
quently robbed and held to ransom by brigands in Calabria, 
which is nothing to the purpose — a man of great powers, excel- 
lent heart, and varied information ; but I had never before seen 
him with a dish of pease, and his conduct in regard to them 
caused me the deepest pain. 

After having seen him thus publicly comport himself, but 
one course was open to me — to cut his acquaintance. I com- 
missioned a mutual friend (the Honorable Poly Anthus) to 
break the matter to this gentleman as delicately as possible, 
and to say that painful circumstances — in nowise affecting Mr. 
Marrowfat’s honor, or my esteem for him — had occurred, which 
obliged me to forego my intimacy with him , and accordingly 
we met, and gave each other the cut direct that night at the 
Duchess of Monte Fiasco’s ball. 

Everybody at Naples remarked the separation of the Damon 
and Pythias — indeed Marrowfat had saved my life more than 
once — but, as an English gentleman, what was I to do ? 

My dear friend was, in this instance the Snob relative. It 
is not snobbish of persons of rank of any other nation to employ 


12 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


their knife in the manner alluded to. I have seen Monte 
Fiasco clean his trencher with his knife, and every Principe in 
company doing likewise. I have seen, at the hospitable board 
of H. I. H. the Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden — (who, if 
these humble lines should come under her Imperial eyes, is be- 
sought to remember graciously the most devoted of her ser- 
vants) — I have seen, I say, the Hereditary Princess of Potz- 
tausend-Donnerwetter (that serenely-beautiful woman) use her 
knife in lieu of a fork or spoon ; I have seen her almost swallow 
it, by Jove ! like Ramo Samee, the Indian juggler. And did I 
blench Did my estimation for the Princess diminish ? No, 
lovely Amelia ! One of the truest passions that ever was in- 
spired by wwian was raised in this bosom by that lady. Beau- 
tiful one ! long, long may the knife carry food to those lips 1 
the reddest and loveliest in the world ! 

The cause of my quarrel with Marrowfat I never breatiied 
to mortal soul for four years. We met in the halls of the aris- 
tocracy — our friends and relatives. We jostled each other in 
the dance or at the board ; but the estrangement continued, 
and seemed irrevocable, until the fourth of June, last year. 

We met at Sir George GollopePs. We were placed, he on 
the right, your humble servant on the left of the admirable Lady 
G. Pease formed jDart of the banquet — ducks and green pease. 
I trembled as I saw Marrowfat helped, and turned away sicken- 
ing, lest I should behold the weapon darting down his horrid 
jaws. 

What was my astonishment, what my delight, when I saw 
him use his fork like any other Christian ! He did not admin- 
ister the cold steel once. Old times rushed back upon me — 
the remembrance of old services — his rescuing me from the 
brigands — his gallant conduct in the affair with the Countess 
Dei Spinachi — his lending me the 1,700/. I almost burst into 
tears with joy — my voice trembled with emotion. George, my 
boy ! ” I exclaimed, ‘‘ George Marrowfat, my dear fellow ! a 
glass of wine ! ” 

Blushing — deeply moved — almost as tremulous as I was 
myself, George answered, “ Frank, shall it be Hock or Madeira ? 

I could have hugged him to my heart but for the presence of 
the company. Little did Lady Golloper know what was the 
cause of the emotion which sent the duckling I was carving 
into her ladyship’s pink satin lap. The most good-natured of 
women pardoned the error, and the butler removed the bird. 

We have been the closest friends ever since, nor, of course, 
has George repeated his odious habit. He acquired it at a 


THE SNOB PL A YPULL Y DEALT WITH 


13 


country school, where they cultivated pease and only used two- 
pronged forks, and it was only by living on the Continent where 
the usage of the four-prong is general, that he lost the horrible 
custom. 

In this point — and in this only — I confess myself a member 
of the Silver-Fork School ; and if this tale but induce one of my 
readers to pause, to examine in his own mind solemnly, and 
ask, ‘^Do I or do I not eat pease with a knife — to see the 
ruin which may fall upon himself by continuing the practice, or 
his family by beholding the example, these lines will not have 
been written in vain. And now, whatever other, authors may 
be, I flatter myself, it will be allowed that /, at least, am a 
moral man. 

By the way, as some readers are dull of comprehension, I 
may as well say what the moral of this history is. The moral 
is this — Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound 
to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders. 

If I should go to the British and Foreign Institute (and 
heaven forbid I should go under any pretext or in any costume 
whatever) — if I should go to one of the tea-parties in a dressing- 
gown and slippers, and not in the usual attire of a gentleman, 
viz. : pumps, a gold waistcoat, a crush hat, a sham frill, and a 
white choker — I should be insulting society, and eating pease 
with 7ny k7iife. Let the porters of that Institute hustle out the 
individual who shall so offend. Such an offender is, as regards 
society, a most emphatical and refractory Snob. It has its code 
and police as well as governments, and he must conform who 
would profit by the decrees set forth for their common comfort. 

I am naturally averse to egotism, and hate self-laudation 
consumedly; but I can’t help relating here a circumstance 
illustrative of the point in question, in which I must think I 
acted with considerable prudence. 

Being at Constantinople a few years since — (on a delicate 
mission), — the Russians were playing a double game, between 
ourselves, and it became necessary on our part to employ an 
extra negotiator — Leckerbiss Pasha of Roumelia, then Chief 
Galeongee of the Porte, gave a diplomatic banquet at his sum- 
mer palace at Bujukdere. I was. on the left of the Galeongee, 
and the Russian agent. Count de Diddloff, on his dexter side. 
Diddloff is a dandy who would die of a rose in aromatic pain ; 
he had tried to have me assassinated three times in the course 
of the negotiation ; but of course we were friends in public, and 
saluted each other in the most cordial and charming manner. 

The Galeongee is — or was, alas ! for a bow-string has done 


THE BOOK OF SHOBS. 


for him — a staunch supporter of the old school of Turkish poli- 
tics. We dined with our fingers, and had flaps of bread for 
plates ; the only innovation he admitted was the use of Euro- 
pean liquors, in which he indulged with great gusto. He was 
an enormous eater. Amongst the dishes a very large one was 
placed before him of a lamb dressed in its wool, stuffed with 
prunes, garlic, asafoetida, capsicums, and other condiments, the 
most abominable mixture that ever mortal smelt or tasted. The 
Galeongee ate of this hugely ; and pursuing the Eastern fashion, 
insisted on helping his friends right and left, and when he came 
to a particularly spicy morsel, would push it with his own hands 
into his guests' very mouths. 

I never shall forget the look of poor Diddloff, when his 
Excellency, rolling up a large quantity of this into a ball and 
exclaiming, Buk Buk " (it is very good), administered the 
horrible bolus to Diddloff. The Russian’s eyes rolled dread- 
fully as he received it : he swallowed it with a grimace that I 
thought must precede a convulsion, and seizing a bottle next 
him, which he thought was Sauterne, but which turned out to 
be Erench brandy, he drank off nearly a pint before he knew 
his error. It finished him; he was carried away from the 
dining-room almost dead, and laid out to cool in a summer- 
house on the Bosphorus. 

When it came to my turn*, I took down the condiment with 
a smile, said “ Bismillah,” licked my lips with easy gratification, 
and when the next dish was served, made up a ball myself so 
dexterously, and popped it down the old Galeongee’s mouth 
with so much grace, that his heart was won. Russia was put 
out of court at once, and the treaty of Kabobanople was signed. 
As for Diddloff, all was over with him: he was recalled to St. 
Petersburg, and Sir Roderick Murchison saw him, under the 
No. 3967, working in the Ural mines. 

The moral of this tale, I need not say, is that there are many 
disagreeable things in society which you are bound to take 
down, and to do so with a smiling face. 


THE SNOB RO YAH 


IS 


CHAPTER IT. 

THE SNOB ROYAL. 

Long since, at the commencement of the reign of her pres- 
ent Gracious Majesty, it chanced “ on a fair summer evening,’’ 
as Mr. James would say, that three or four young cavaliers were 
drinking a cup of wine after dinner at the hostelry called the 
“ King’s Arms,” kept by Mistress Anderson, in the royal village 
of Kensington. ’Twas a balmy evening, and the wayfarers 
looked out on a cheerful scene. The tall elms of the ancient 
gardens were in full leaf, and countless chariots of the nobility 
of England whirled by to the neighboring palace, where princely 
Sussex (whose income latterly only allowed him to give tea- 
parties) entertained his royal niece at a state banquet. When 
the caroches of the nobles had set down their owners at the 
banquet hall, their varlets and servitors came to quaff a flagon 
of nut-brown ale in the “ King’s Arms ” gardens hard by. We' 
watched these fellows from our lattice. By Saint Boniface 
’twas a rare sight ! 

The tulips in Mynheer Van Dunck’s gardens were not more 
gorgeous than the liveries of these pie-coated retainers. All 
the flowers of the field bloomed in their ruffled bosoms, all the 
hues of the rainbow gleamed in their plush breeches, and the long- 
caned ones walked up and down the garden with that charming 
solemnity, that delightful quivering swagger of the calves, which 
has always had a frantic fascination for us. The walk was not 
wide enough for them as the shoulder-knots strutted up and 
down it in canary, and crimson, and light blue. 

Suddenly, in the midst of their pride, a little bell was rung, 
a side door opened, and (after setting down their Royal Mis- 
tress) her Majesty’s own crimson footmen, with epaulets and 
plushes, came in. 

It was pitiable to see the other poor Johns slink off at this 
arrival ! Not one of the honest private Plushes could stand up 
before the Royal Flunkeys. They left the walk : they sneaked 
into dark holes and drank their beer in silence. The Royal 
Plush kept possession of the garden until the Royal Plush 
dinner was announced, when it retired, and we heard from the 
pavilion where they dined, conservative cheers and speeches, 
and Kentish fires. The other Flunkeys we never saw more. 


i6 


THE BOOK OF SKOBS. 


My dear Flunkeys, so absurdly conceited at one moment 
and so abject at the next, are but the types of their masters in 
this world. He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob— 
perhaps that is a safe definition of the character. 

And this is why I have, with the utmost respect, ventured 
to place the Snob Royal at the head of my list, causing all 
others to give way before him, as the Flunkeys before the royal 
representative in Kensington Gardens. To say of such and 
such a Gracious Sovereign that he is a Snob, is but to say that 
his Majesty is a man. Kings, too, are men and Snobs. In a 
country where Snobs are in the majority, a prime one, surely, 
cannot be unfit to govern. With us they have succeeded to 
admiration. 

For instance, James I. was a Snob, and a Scotch Snob, than 
which the world contains no more offensive creature. He ap- 
pears to have had not one of the good qualities of a man — 
neither courage, nor generosity, nor honesty, nor brains ; but read 
what the great Divines and Doctors of England said about him ! 
Charles II., his grandson, was a rogue, but not a Snob ; whilst 
Louis XIV., his old squaretoes of a contemporary, — the great 
• worshipper of Bigwiggery — has always .struck me as a most un- 
doubted and Royal Snob. 

I will not, however, take instances from our own country of 
Royal Snobs, but refer to a neighboring kingdom, that of 
Brentford — and its monarch, the late great and lamented Gor- 
gius IV. With the same humility with which the footmen at 
the King’s Arms ” gave way before the Plush Royal, the 
aristocracy of the Brentford nation bent down and truckled be- 
fore Gorgius, and proclaimed him the first gentleman in Europe. 
And it’s a wonder to think what is the gentlefolks’ opinion of a 
gentleman, when they gave Gorgius such a title. 

What is it to be a gentleman ? Is it to be honest, to be 
gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and, possessing 
all these qualities,- to exercise them in the most graceful outward 
manner ? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband, 
and honest father } Ought his life to be decent — his bills to 
be paid — his tastes to be high and elegant — his aims in life 
lofty and noble ? In a word, ought not the Biography of a 
First Gentleman in Europe to be of such a nature that it 
might be read in Youns: Ladies’ Schools with advantage, and 
studied with profit in the Seminaries of Young Gentlemen 1 I 
put this question to all instructors of youth — to Mrs. Ellis and 
the Women of England ; to all schoolmasters, from Doctor 
Hawtrey down to Mr. Squeers- 1 conjure up before me an 


THE SNOB ROYAL. 


17 


awful tribunal of youth and innocence, attended by its venerable 
instructors (like the ten thousand red-cheeked charity-children 
in Saint Paul’s), sitting in judgment, and Gorgius pleading his 
cause in the midst. Out of Court, out of Court, fat old Flori- 

zel ! Beadles, turn out that bloated, pimple-faced man ! 

If Gorgius must have a statue in the new Palace which the 
Brentford nation is building, it ought to be set up in the Flun- 
key’s Hall. He should be represented cuttifig out a coat, in 
which art he is said to have excelled. He also invented Ma- 
raschino punch, a shoe-buckle (this was in the vigor of his 
youth, and the prime force of his invention), and a Chinese pa- 
vilion, the most hideous building in the world. He could drive 
a four-in-hand very nearly as well as the Brighton coachman, 
could fence elegantly, and it is said, played the fiddle well. 
And he smiled with such irresistible fascination, that persons 
who were introduced into his august presence became his 
victims, body and soul, as a rabbit becomes the prey of a great 
big boa-constrictor. 

I would wager that if Mr. Widdicomb were, by a revolution, 
placed on the throne of Brentford, people would be equally 
fascinated by his irresistibly majestic smile, and tremble as they 
knelt down to kiss his hand. If he went to Dublin they would 
erect an obelisk on the spot where he first landed, as the Pad- 
dylanders did when Gorgius visited them. Wo have all of us 
read with delight that story of the King’s voyage to Haggisland, 
where his presence inspired such a fury of loyalty ; and where 
the most famous man of the country — the Baron of Bradwar- 
dine — coming on board the royal yacht, and finding a glass out 
of which Gorgius had drunk, put it into his coat-pocket as an 
inestimable relic, and went ashore again. But the Baron sat 
down upon the glass and broke it, and cut his coat tails very 
much ; and the inestimable relic was lost to the world forever. 
O noble Bradwardine ! What old-world superstition could set 
you on your knees before such an idol as that ^ 

If you want to moralize upon the mutability of human 
affairs, go and see the figure of Gorgius in his real, identical 
robes, at the wax-work. — Admittance one shilling. Children 
and flunkeys sixpence. Go, and pay sixpence. 

2 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


i8 


CHAPTER III. 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE ARISTOCRACY ON SNOBS. 

Last Sunday week, being at church in this City, and the 
service just ended, I heard two Snobs conversing about the 
Parson. One was asking the other who the clergyman was ? 
“ He is Mr. So-and-so,’^ the second Snob answered, “ domestic 
chaplain to the Earl of What-d’ye-caH’im.’^ “ Oh, is he ? said 
the first Snob, with a tone of indescribable satisfaction. — The 
Parson’s^ orthodoxy and identity were’ at once settled in this 
Snob’s mind. He knew no more about the Earl than about the 
Chaplain, but he took the latter’s character upon the authority 
of the former ; and went home quite contented with his Rever- 
ence, like a little truckling Snob. 

This incident gave me more matter for reflection even than 
the sermon : and wonderment at the extent and prevalence of 
Lordolatry in this country. What could it matter to Snob 
whether his Reverence were chaplain to his Lordship or not ? 
What Peerage-worship there is all through this free country I 
How we are all implicated in it, and more or less down on our 
knees. — And with regard to the great subject on hand, I think 
that the influence of the Peerage upon Snobbishness has been 
more remarkable than that of any other institution. The 
increase, encouragement, and maintenance of Snobs are among 
the ‘‘priceless services,” as Lord John Russell says, which we 
owe to the nobility. 

It can’t be otherwise. A man becomes enormously rich, or 
he jobs successfully iii the aid of a Minister, or he wins a great 
battle, or executes a treaty, or is a clever lawyer who makes a 
multitude of fees and ascends the bench ; and the country 
rewards him forever with a gold coronet (with more or less 
balls or leaves) and a title, and a rank as legislator. “Your 
merits are so great,” says the nation, “ that your children shall 
be allowed to reign over us, in a manner. It does not in the 
least matter that your eldest son be a fool : we think your 
services so remarkable, that he shall have the reversion of your 
honors when death vacates your noble shoes. If you are poor, 
we will give you such a sum of money as shall enable you and 
the eldest-born of your race forever to live in fat and splendor. 


THE INFLUENCE OF THE ARISTOCRACY ON SNOBS. 19 

It is our wish that there should be a race set apart in this 
happy country, who shall hold the first rank, have the first 
prizes and chances in all government jobs and patronages. 
We cannot make all your dear children Peers — that would make 
Peerage common and crowd the House of Lords uncomfort- 
ably — but the young ones shall have everything a Government 
can give : they shall get the pick of all the places : they shall 
be Captains and Lieutenant-Colonels at nineteen, when hoary 
headed old lieutenants are spending thirty years at drill : they 
shall command ships at one-and-twenty, and veterans who 
fought before they were born. And as we are eminently a free 
people, and in order to encourage all men to do their duty, we 
say to any man of any rank — get enormously rich, make im- 
mense fees as a lawyer, or great speeches, or distinguish yourself 
and win battles — and you, even you, shall come into the privi- 
leged class, and your children shall reign naturally over ours.’’ 

How can we help Snobbishness, with such a prodigious 
national institution erected for its worship ? How can we help 
cringing to Lords ; Flesh and blood can’t do otherwise. What 
man can withstand this prodigious temptation ? Inspired by 
what is called a noble emulation, some people grasp at honors 
and win them ; others, too weak or mean, blindly admire and' 
grovel before those who have gained them ; others, not being 
able to acquire them, furiously hate, abuse, and envy. There 
are only a few bland and not-in-the-least-conceited philosophers, 
who can behold the state of society, viz : Toadyism, organized: 
— ^base Man-and-Mammon worship, instituted by command of 
law : — Snobbishness, in a word, perpetuated, — and mark the 
phenomenon calmly. And of these calm moralists, is there 
one, I wonder, whose heart would not throb with pleasure if 
he could be seen walking arm-in-arm with a couple of dukes 
down Pall Mall ? No : it is impossible, in our condition of 
society, not to be sometimes a Snob. 

On one side it encourages the commoner to be snobbishly 
mean, and the noble to be snobbishly arrogant. When a noble 
marchioness writes in her travels about the hard necessity 
under which steamboat travellers labor of being brought into 
contact ‘‘ with all sorts and conditions of people : ” implying 
that a fellowship with God’s creatures is disagreeable to her 
Ladyship, who is their superior when, I say, the Marchioness 

of writes in this fashion, we must consider that out of her 

natural heart it would have been impossible for any woman to 
'>ave had such a sentiment ; but that the habit of truckling and 
Cmging, which all who surrgund her have adopted towards 


20 


THE BOOH OF SNOBS. 


this beautiful and magnificent lady, — this proprietor of so many 
black and other diamonds, — has really induced her to believe 
that she is the superior of the world in general : and that 
people are not to associate with her except awfully at a dis- 
tance. I recollect being once at the city of Grand Cairo, 
through which a European Royal Prince was passing India- 
wards. One night at the inn there was a great disturbance : a 
man had drowned himself in the well hard by : all the inhab- 
itants of the hotel came bustling into the Court, and amongst 
others your humble servant, who asked of a certain young man 
the reason of the disturbance. How was I to know that this 
young gent was a prince ? He had not his crown and sceptre 
on : he was dressed in a white jacket and felt hat : but he 
looked surprised at anybody speaking to him : answered an 
unintelligible monosyllable, and — hecko7ied his aide-de-camp to 
come and speak to me. It is our fault, not that of the great, that 
they should fancy themselves so far above us. If you will 
fling yourself under the wheels, Juggernaut will go over you, 
depend upon it ; and if you and I, my dear friend, had Kotoo 
performed before us every day, — found people whenever we 
appeared grovelling in slavish adoration, we should drop into 
the airs of superiority quite naturally, and accept the greatness 
with which the world insisted upon endowing us. 

Here is an instance, out of Lord L ’s travels, of that 

calm, good-natured, undoubting way in which a great man 
accepts the homage of his inferiors. After making some pro- 
found and ingenious remarks about the town of Brussels, his 
lordship says : — “ Staying some days at the Hotel de Belle 
Vue — a greatly overrated establishment, and not nearly so 
comfortable as the Hotel de France — I made acquaintance 

with Dr. L the physician of the Mission. He was desirous 

of doing the honor of the place to me, and he ordered for us a 
diner en gourmand at the chief restaurateur’s, maintaining it 
surpassed the Rocher at Paris. Six or eight partook of the 
entertainment, and we all agreed it was infinitely inferior to 
the Paris display, and much more extravagant. So much for 
the copy.” 

And so much for the gentleman who gave the dinner. Dr. 

L , desirous to do his lordship ‘‘ the honor of the place,” 

feasts him with the best victuals money can procure — and my 
lord finds the entertainment extravagant and inferior. Ex- 
travagant ! it was not extravagant to him; — Inferior! Mr. 

L did his best to satisfy those noble jaws, and my lord 

receives the entertainment, and dismisses the giver with ^ 


THE “ COURT CIRCULAR. 


21 


rebuke. It is like a three-tailed Pasha grumbling about an 
unsatisfactory backsheesh. 

But how should it be otherwise in a country where Lordol- 
atry is part of our creed, and where our children are brought 
up to respect the “ Peerage as the Englishman’s second 
Bible. 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE COURT CIRCULAR,” AND ITS INFLUENCE ON SNOBS. 

Example is the best of precepts ; so let us begin with a 
true and authentic story, showing how young aristocratic snobs 
are reared, and how early their Snobbishness may be made to 
bloom. A beautiful and fashionable lady — (pardon, gracious 
madam, that your story should be made public ; but it is so 
moral that it ought to be known to the universal world) — told 
me that in her early youth she had a little acquaintance, who 
is now indeed a beautiful and fashionable lady too. In men- 
tioning Miss Snobky, daughter of Sir Snobby Snobky, whose pre- 
sentation at Court caused such a sensation, need I say more ? 

When Miss Snobly;- was so very young as to he in the nur- 
sery regions, and to walk of early mornings in St. James’s Park, 
protected by a French governess and followed by a huge 
hirsute flunkey in the canary-colored livery of the Snobky, she 
used occasionally in these promenades to meet with young Lord 
Claude Lollipop, the Marquis of Sillabub’s younger son. In 
the very height of the season, from some unexplained cause, 
the Snobkys suddenly determined upon leaving town. Miss 
Snobky spoke to her female friend and confidante. ‘‘ What 
will poor Claude Lollipop say when he hears of my absence ? 
asked the tender-hearted child. 

Oh, perhaps he won’t hear of it,” answers the confidante. 

‘‘ My dear, he will read it m the papers,^' replied the dear 
little fashionable rogue of seven years old. She knew already 
her importance, and how all the world of England, how all the 
would-be-genteel people, how all the silver-fork worshippers, 
how all the tattle-mongers, how all the grocers’ ladies, the 
tailors’ ladies, the attorneys’ and merchants’ ladies, and the 
people living at Clapham and Brunswick Square, — who have 
no more chance of consorting with a Snobky than mv beloved 


THE BOOK OP SNOBS, 


22 

reader has of dining with the Emperor of China — yet watched 
the movements of the Snobkys with interest, and were glad to 
know when they came to London and left it. 

Here is the account of Miss Snobky^s dress, and that of 
her mother. Lady Snobky, from the papers : — 

“miss snobky. 

“ Habit de Cour, composed of a yellow nankeen illusion 
dress over a slip of rich pea-green corduroy, trimmed en tab- 
lier, with bouquets of Brussels sprouts : the body and sleeves 
handsomely trimmed with calimanco, and festooned with a pink 
train and white radishes. Head-dress, carrot and lappets. 

“ LADY SNOBKY. 

“ Costume de Cour, composed of a train of the most superb 
Pekin bandannas, elegantly trimmed with spangles, tinfoil, and 
red-tape. Bodice and under-dress of sky-blue velveteen, trim- 
med with bouffants and noeuds of bell-pulls. Stomacher, a 
muffin. Head-dress, a bird’s nest, with a bird of Paradise, 
over a rich brass knocker en ferroni^re. This splendid cos- 
tume, by Madame Crinoline, of Regent Street, was the object 
of universal admiration.” 

This is what you read. Oh, Mrs. Ellis ! Oh, mothers, 
daughters, aunts, grandmothers of England, this is the sort of 
writing which is put in the newspapers for you ! How can 
you help being the mothers, daughters, &c., of Snobs, so long 
as this balderdash is set before you ? 

You stuff the little rosy foot of a Chinese young lady of 
fashion into a slipper that is about the size of a salt-cruet, and 
keep the poor little toes there imprisoned and twisted up so 
long that the dwarfishness becomes irremediable. Later, the 
foot would not expand to the natural size were you to give her 
a washing-tub for a shoe, and for all her life she has little feet, 
;and is a cripple. Oh, my dear Miss Wiggins, thank your 
stars that those beautiful feet of yours — though I declare when 
you walk they are so small as to be almost invisible — thank 
your stars that society never so practised upon them ; but look 
around and see how many friends of ours in the highest circles 
have had their brams so prematurely and hopelessly pinched 
and distorted. 

How can you expect that those poor creatures are to move 


THE COURT circular: 


23 


naturally when the world and their parents have mutilated 
them so cruelly. As long as a Court Circular exists, how the 
deuce are people whose names are chronicled in it ever to be- 
lieve themselves the equal of the cringing race which daily 
reads that abominable trash I believe that ours is the only 
country in the world now where the Court Circular remains in 
full flourish — where you read, ‘‘ This day his Royal Highness 
Prince Pattypan was taken an airing in his go-cart.” The 
Princess Pimminy was taken a drive, attended by her ladies of 
honor, and accompanied by her doll,” &c. We laugh at tlie 
solemnity with which Saint Simon announces that Sa Jfajhie 
se medicamotte aujourddiui. Under our very noses the same 
folly is daily going on. That wonderful and mysterious man, 
the author of the Court Circular^ drops in with his budget at 
the newspaper offices every night. I once asked the editor of 
a paper to allow me to lie in wait and see him. 

I am told that in a kingdom where there is a German King- 
Consort (Portugal it must be, for the Queen of that country 
married a German Prince, who is greatly admired and re- 
spected by the natives,) whenever the Consort takes the diver- 
sion of shooting among the rabbit-warrens of Cintra, or the 
pheasant-preserves of Mafra, he has a keeper to load his guns, 
as a matter of course, and then they are handed to the noble- 
man, his equerry, and the nobleman hands them to the Prince, 
who blazes away — gives back the discharged gun to the noble- 
man, who gives it to the keeper, and so on. But the Prince ’ 
wo7id take the gun fro7n the hands of the loader. 

As long as this unnatural and monstrous etiquette continues. 
Snobs there must be. The three persons engaged in this 
transaction are, for the time being. Snobs. 

1. The keeper — the least Snob of all, because he is dis- 
charging his daily duty ; but he appears here as a Snob, that is 
to say, in a position of debasement, before another human 
being (the Prince), with whom he is only allowed to commu- 
nicate through another party. A free Portuguese gamekeeper, 
who professes himself to be unworthy to communicate directly 
with any person, confesses himself to be a Snob. 

2 . The nobleman in waiting is a Snob. If it degrades the 
Prince to receive the gun from the gamekeeper, it is degrading 
to the nobleman in waiting to execute that service. He acts as 
a Snob towards the keeper, whom he keeps from communica- 
tion with the Prince — a Snob towards the Prince, to whom he 
pays a degrading homage. 


24 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


3. The King-Consort of Portugal is a Snob for insulting 
fellow-men in this way. There’s no harm in his accepting the 
services of the keeper directly ; but indirectly he insults the 
service performed, and the two servants who perform it ; and 
therefore, I say, respectfully, is a most undoubted, though 
royal Sn-b. 

And then you read in the Diario do Yesterday, 

his Majesty the King took the diversion of shooting in the 
woods of Cintra, attended by Colonel the Honorable Whiske- 
rando Sombrero. His Majesty returned to the Necessidades to 
lunch, at,” &c., &c. 

Oh 1 that Court Circular ! once more, I exclaim. Down 
with the Court Circular — that engine and propagator of Snob- 
bishness ! I promise to subscribe for a year to any daily paper 
that shall come out without a Court Circular — were it the Morn- 
ing Herald itself. When I read that trash I rise in my wrath ; 
I feel myself disloyal, a regicide, a member of the Calf’s Head 
Club. The only Coui't Circular story which ever pleased me, 
was that of the King of Spain, who in great part was roasted, 
because there was not time for the Prime Minister to command 
the Lord Chamberlain to desire the Grand Gold Stick to order 
the first page in waiting to bid the chief of the flunkeys to 
request the House maid of Honor to bring up a pail of water to 
put his Majesty out. 

I am like the Pasha of three tails, to whom the Sultan sends 
his Coui't Circular,^ the bowstring. 

It chokes me. May its usage be abolished forever. 


CHAPTER V. 

WHAT SNOBS ADMIRE. 

Now let US consider how difficult it is even for great men to 
escape from being Snobs. It is very well for the reader, whose 
fine feelings are disgusted by the assertion that Kings, Princes, 
Lords, are Snobs, to say, “ You are confessedly a Snob your- 
self. In professing to depict Snobs, it is only your own ugly 
mug which you are copying with a Narcissus-like conceit and 
fatuity.” But I shall pardon this explosion of ill-temper on the 


WHA T SNOBS ADMIRE, 


25 


part of my constant reader, reflecting upon this misfortune of 
his birth and country. It is impossible for any Briton, perhaps, 
not to be a Snob in some degree. If people can be convinced 
of this fact, an immense point is gained, surely. If I have 
pointed out the disease, let us hope that other scientific charac- 
ters may discover the remedy. 

If you, who are a person of the middle ranks of life, are a 
Snob, — you whom nobody flatters particularly ; you who have 
no toadies ; you whom no cringing flunkeys or shopmen bow 
out of doors ; you whom the policeman tells to move on ; you 
who are jostled in the crowd of this world, and amongst the 
Snobs our brethren : consider how much harder it is for a man 
to escape who has not your advantages, and is all his life long 
subject to adulation ; the butt of meanness ; consider how diffi- 
cult it is for the Snobs’ idol not to be a Snob. 

As I was discoursing with my friend Eugenio in this impres- 
sive way. Lord Buckram passed us, the son of the Marquis of 
Bagwig, and knocked at the door of the family mansion in Red 
Lion Square. His noble father and mother occupied, as every- 
body knows, distinguished posts in the Courts of late Sover- 
eigns. The Marquis was Lord of the Pantry, and her Ladyship, 
Lady of the Powder Closet to Queen Charlotte. Buck (as I 
call him, for we are very familiar) gave me a nod as he passed, 
and I proceeded to show Eugenio how it was impossible that 
this nobleman should not be one of ourselves, having been 
practised upon by Snobs all his life. 

His parents resolved to give him a public education, and 
sent him to school at the earliest possible period. The Reverend 
Otto Rose, D. D., Principal of the Preparatory Academy for 
young noblemen and gentlemen, Richmond Lodge, took this 
little Lord in hand, and fell down and worshipped him. He 
always introduced him to fathers and mothers who came to visit 
their children at the school. He referred with pride and pleas- 
ure to the most noble the Marquis of Bagwig, as one of the 
kind friends and patrons of his Seminary. He made Lord 
Buckram a bait for such a multiplicity of pupils, that a new wing 
was built to Richmond Lodge, and thirty-five new little white 
dimity beds were added to the establishment. Mrs. Rose used 
to take out the little Lord in the one-horse chaise with her 
when she paid visits, until the Rector’s lady and the Surgeon’s 
wife almost died with envy. His own son and Lord Buckram 
having been discovered robbing an orchard together, the Doctor 
flogged his own flesh and blood most unmercifully for leading 
the young Lord astray. He parted from him with tears. There 


26 


THE BOOK OF SKOrZ 


was always a letter directed to the Most Noble the Marquis of 
Bagwig, on the Doctor’s study table, when any visitors were 
received by him. 

At Eton, a great deal of Snobbishness was thrashed out of 
Lord Buckram, and he was birched with perfect impartiality. 
Even there, however, a select band of sucking tuft-hunters fol- 
lowed him. Young Crcesus lent him three-and -twenty bran new 
sovereigns out of his father’s bank. Young Snaily did his exer- 
cises for him, and tried “to know him at home but Young 
Bull licked him in a fight of fifty-five minutes, and he was caned 
several times with great advantage for not sufficiently polishing 
his master Smith’s shoes. Boys are not all toadies in the 
morning of life. 

But when he went to the University, crowds of toadies 
sprawled over him. The tutors toadied him. The fellows in 
hall paid him great clumsy compliments. The Dean never re- 
marked his absence from Chapel, or heard any noise issuing 
from his rooms. A number of respectable young fellows, (it is 
among the respectable, the Baker Street class, that Snobbish- 
ness flourishes, more than among any set of people in England) 
— a number of these clung to him like leeches. There was no 
end now to Croesus’s loans of money ; and Buckram couldn’t 
ride out with the hounds, but Snaily (a timid creature by nature) 
was in the field, and would take any leap at which his friend 
chose to ride. Young Rose came up to the same College, 
having been kept back for that express purpose by his father. 
He spent a quarter’s allowance in giving Buckram a single 
dinner ; but he knew there was always pardon for him for ex- 
travagance in such a cause ; and a ten-pound note always came 
to him from home when, he mentioned Buckram’s name in a 
letter. What wild visions entered the brains of Mrs. Podge 
and Miss Podge, the wife and daughter of the Principal of 
Lord Buckram’s College, I don’t know, but that reverend old 
gentleman was too profound a flunkey by nature ever for one 
minute to think that a child of his could marry a nobleman. 
He therefore hastened on his daughter’s union with Professor 
Crab. 

When Lord Buckram, after taking his honorary degree, (for 
Alma Mater is a Snob, too, and truckles to a Lord like the 
rest,) — when Lord Buckram went abroad to finish his educa- 
tion, you all know what dangers he ran, and what numbers of 
caps were set at him. Lady Leach and her daughters followed 
him from Paris to Rome, and from Rome to l^aden-Pladen ; 
Miss Leggitt burst into tears before his face when he announced 


PV//y1 T SNOBS AD MIBB, 


27 


his determination to quit Naples, and fainted on the neck of 
her mamma : Captain Macdragon, of Macdragonstown, county 
Tipperary, called upon him to explene his intintions with re- 
spect to his sisther. Miss Amalia Macdragon, of Macdragons- 
town, and proposed to shoot him unless he married that spot- 
less and beautiful young creature, who was afterwards led to 
the altar by Mr. Muff, at Cheltenham. If perseverance and 
forty thousand pounds down could have tempted him. Miss 
Lydia Croesus would certainly have been Lady Buckram. 
Count Towrowski was glad to take her with half the money, as 
all the genteel world knows. 

And now, perhaps, the reader is anxious to know what sort 
of a man this is who wounded so many ladies’ hearts, and who 
has been such a prodigious favorite with men. If we were to 
describe him it would be personal. Besides, it really does not 
matter in the least what sort of a man he is, or what his per- 
sonal qualities are. 

Suppose he is a young nobleman of a literary turn, and that 
he published poems ever so foolish and feeble, the Snobs would 
purchase thousands of his volumes : the publishers (who re- 
fused my Passion-Flowers, and my grand Epic at any price) 
would give him his own. Suppose he is a nobleman of a jovial 
turn, and has a fancy for wrenching off knockers, frequenting 
gin-shops, and half murdering policemen : the public will sym- 
pathize good-naturedly with his amusements, and say he is a 
hearty, honest fellow. Suppose he is fond of play and the 
turf, and has a fancy to be a blackleg, and occasionally con- 
descends to pluck a pigeon at cards ; the public will pardon 
him, and many honest people will court him, as they would 
court a house-breaker if he happened to be a Lord. Suppose 
he is an idiot ; yet, by the glorious constitution, he is good 
enough to govern us. Suppose he is an honest, high-minded 
gentleman ; so much the better for himself. But he may be an 
ass, and yet respected ; or a ruffian, and be exceedingly popu- 
lar ; or a rogue, and yet excuses will be found for him. Snobs 
will still worship him. Male Snobs will do him honor, and 
females look kindly upon him, however hideous he may be. 


2 $ 


THE BOOH OE SNOBS. 


CHAPTER VI. 

ON SOME RESPECTABLE SNOBS. 

Having received a great deal of obloquy for dragging inon- 
archs, princes, and the respected nobility into the Snob cate- 
gory, I trust to please everybody in the present chapter, by 
stating my firm opinion that it is among the respeciM/le classes 
of this vast and happy empire that the greatest profusion of 
Snobs is to be found. I pace down my beloved Baker Street, 
(I am engaged on a life of Baker, founder of this celebrated 
street,) I walk in Harley Street (where every other house has a 
hatchment), Wimpole Street, that is as cheerful as the Cata- 
combs — a dingy Mausoleum of the genteel : — I rove round 
Regent^s Park, where the plaster is patching off the house 
walls ; where Methodist preachers are holding forth to three 
little children in the green inclosures, and puffy valetudinarians 
are cantering in the solitary mud : — I thread the doubtful zig- 
zags of May Fair, where Mrs. Kitty Lorimer’s brougham may 
be seen drawn up next door to old Lady Lollipop’ belozenged 
family coach ; — 1 roam through Belgravia, that pale and polite 
district, where all the inhabitants look prim and correct, and 
the mansions are painted a faint whity-brown : I lose myself in 
the new squares and terraces of the brilliant bran-new Bays- 
water-and-Tyburn-Junction line ; and in one and all of these 
districts the same truth comes across me. I stop before any 
house at hazard, and say, O house, you are inhabited — O 
knocker, you are knocked at — O undressed flunkey, sunning 
your lazy calves as you lean against the iron railings, you are 
paid — by Snobs.” It is a tremendous thought that ; and it is 
almost sufficient to drive a benevolent mind to madness to think 
that perhaps there is not one in ten of those houses where the 
“ Peerage ” does not lie on the drawing-room table. Consider- 
ing the harm that foolish lying book does, I would have all the 
copies of it burned, as the barber burned all Quixote’s books 
of humbugging chivalry. 

Look at this grand house in the middle of the square. The 
Earl of Loughcorrib lives there : he has fifty thousand a year. 
A dejeuner dmisant given at his house last week cost, who 
knows how much ? The mere flowers for the room and bou- 
quets for the ladies cost four hundred pounds. That man in 


ON SOME RESPECTABLE SNOBS. 


29 


drab trousers, coming crying down the steps, is a dun : Lord 
Loughcdrrib has ruined him, and won’t see him : that is, his 
lordship is peeping through the blind of his study at him now. 
Go thy ways, Loughcorrib, thou art a Snob, a heartless pre- 
tender, a hypocrite of hospitality ; a rogue who passes forged 
notes upon society ; — but I am growing too eloquent. 

You see that fine house. No. 23, where a butcher’s boy is 
ringing the area-bell. He has three mutton-chops in his tray. 
They are for the dinner of a very different and very respectable 
family ; for Lady Susan Scraper, and her daughters. Miss 
Scraper and Miss Emily Scraper. The domestics, luckily for 
them, are on board wages — two huge footmen in light-blue and 
canary, a fat steady coachman who is a Methodist, and a but- 
ler who would never have stayed in the family but that he was 
orderly to General Scraper when the General distinguished 
himself at Walcheren. His widow sent his portrait to the 
United Service Club, and it is hung up in one of the back 
dressing-closets there. He is represented at a parlor window 
with red curtains ; in the distance is a whirlwind, in which 
cannon are firing off ; and he is pointing to a chart, on which 
are written the words ‘‘Walcheren, Tobago.” 

Lady Susan is, as everybody knows by referring to the 
“ British Bible,” a daughter of the great and good Earl Bagwig 
before mentioned. She thinks everything belonging to her the 
greatest and best in the world. The first of men naturally are 
the Buckrams, her own race : then follow in rank the Scrapers. 
The General was the greatest general : his eldest son. Scraper 
Buckram Scraper, is at present the greatest and best ; his 
second son the next greatest and best ; and herself the paragon 
of women. 

Indeed, she is a most respectable and honorable lady. She 
goes to church of course : she would fancy the Church in dan- 
ger if she did not. She subscribes to the church and parish 
charities ; and is a directress of many meritorious charitable 
institutions — of Queen Charlotte’s Lying-in Hospital, the 
Washerwomen’s Asylum, the British Drummers’ Daughters’ 
Home, &c., &c. She is a model of a matron. 

The tradesman never lived who could say that his bill was 
not paid on the quarter-day. The beggars of her neighborhood 
avoid her like a pestilence ; for while she walks out, protected 
by John, that domestic has always two or three mendicity tickets 
ready for deserving objects. Ten guineas a year will pay all 
her charities. There is no respectable lady in all London who 
gets her name more often printed for such a sum of money. 


30 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


^ Those three mutton-chops which you see entering at the 
kitchen door will be served on the family plate at seven o’clock 
this evening, the huge footman being present, and the butler in 
black, and the crest and coat-of-arms of the Scrapers blazing 
everywhere. I pity Miss Emily Scraper — she is still young — 
young and hungry. Is it a fact that she spends her pocket- 
money in buns t Malicious tongues say so ; but she has very 
little to spare for buns, the poor little hungry soul ! For the 
fact is, that when the footmen, and the ladies’-maids, and the 
fat coach-horses, which are jobbed, and the six dinner-parties 
in the season, and the two great solemn evening-parties, and 
the rent of the big house, and the journey to an English or 
foreign watering-place for the autumn, are paid, my lady’s 
income has dwindled away to a very small sum, and she is as 
poor as you or I. 

You would not think it when you saw her big carriage 
rattling up to the drawing-room, and caught a glimpse of hex 
plumes, lappets, and diamonds, waving over her ladyship’s 
sandy hair and majestical hooked nose ; — you would not think 
it when you hear “ Lady Susan Scraper’s carriage ” bawled out 
at midnight so as to disturb all Belgravia : — you would not 
think it when she comes rustling into church, the obsequious 
John behind with the bag of Prayer-books. Is it possible, you 
would say, that so grand and awful a personage as that can be 
hard-up for money ? Alas ! so it is. 

She never heard such a word as Snob, I will engage, in this 
wicked and vulgar world. And, O stars and garters ! how she 
would start if she heard that she — she, as solemn as Minerva 
— she, as chaste as Diana (without that heathen goddess’s 
unladylike propensity for field-sports) — that she too was a 
Snob ! 

A Snob she is, as long as she sets that prodigious value 
upon herself, upon her name, upon her outward appearance, 
and indulges in that intolerable pomposity ; as long as she goes 
parading abroad, like Solomon in all his glory ; as long as she 
goes to bed — as I believe she does — with a turban and a bird 
of paradise in it, and a court-train to her night-gown ; as long 
as she is so insufferably virtuous and condescending ; as 
long as she does not cut at least one of those footmen down 
into mutton-chops for the benefit of the young ladies. 

I had my notions of her from my old schoolfellow, — her son 
Sydney Scraper — a Chancery barrister without any practice — 
the most placid, polite, and genteel of Snobs, who never ex- 
ceeded his allowance of two hundred a year, and who may be 


ON SOME RESPECTABLE SNOBS. 3 I 

seen any evening at the “Oxford and Cambridge Club,” 
simpering over the Quarterly lleineuf, in the blameless enjoy- 
ment of his half-pint of port. 


CHAPTER VII. 

ON SOME RESPECTABLE SNOBS. 

Look at the next house to Lady Susan Scraper’s, The first 
mansion with the awning over the door : that canopy will be 
let down this evening for tlie comfort of the friends of Sir 
Alured and Lady S. de Mogyns, whose parties are so much 
admired by the public, and the givers themselves. 

Peach-colored liveries laced with silver, and pea-green plush 
inexpressibles, render the De Mogyns’ flunkey the pride of the 
ring when they appear in Hyde Park, wliere Lad de Mogyns, 
as she sits upon her satin cushions, with her d varf spaniel in 
her arms, only bows to the very selectest of tlie genteel. Times 
are altered now with Mary Anne, or as she calls herself, Marian 
de Mogyns. 

She was the daughter of Captain Flack of the Rathdrum 
Fencibles, who crossed with his regiment over from Ireland to 
Caermarthenshire ever so many years ago, and defended Wales 
from the Corsican invader. The Rathdrums were quartered at 
Pontydwdlm, where Mada 1 wooed and won her De Mogyns, a 
young banker in the place. His attentions to Miss Flack at a 
race-ball were such that her father said De Mogyns must either 
die on the field of honor, or become his son-in-law. He pre- 
ferred marriage. His name was Muggins then, and his father 
— a flourishing banker, army-contractor, smuggler, and general 
jobber — almost disinherited him on account of this connection. 
There is a story that Muggins the Elder was made a baronet 
for having lent money to a R-y-1 p-rs-n-ge. I do not believe it. 
The R-y-1 Family always paid their debts, from the Prince of 
Wales downwards. 

Howbeit, to his life’s end he remained simple Sir Thomas 
Muggins, representing Pontydwdlm in Parliament for many 
years after the war. The old banker died in course of time, 
and to use the affectionate phrase common on such occasions, 
“cut up ” prodigiously well. His son, Alfred Smith Mogyns, 
succeeded to the main portion of his wealth, and to his titles 


32 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


and the bloody hand of his scutcheon. It was not for many 
years after that he appeared as Sir Alured Mogyns Smyth de 
Mogyns, with a genealogy found out for him by the Editor of 
“ Fluke’s Peerage,” and which appears as follows in that 
work . — 


“ De Mogyns. — Sir Alured Mogyns Smyth, 2nd Baronet. This gentleman is a repre- 
sentative of one of the most ancient families of Wales, who trace their descent until it is lost 
in the mists of antiquity. A genealogical tree beginning with Shem is in the possession of 
the family, and is stated by a legend of many thousand years^ date to have been drawn on 
papyrus by a grandson of the patriarch himself. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt 
of the immense antiquity of the race of Mogyns, 

“ In the time 01 Boadicea, Hogyn Mogyn, of the hundred Beeves, was a suitor and a 
rival of Caractacus for the hand of that Princess. He was a person gigantic in stature, and 
was slain by Suetonius in the battle which terminated the liberties of Britain. From him 
descended directly the Princes of Pontydwdlm, Mogyn of the Golden Harp, (see the 
Mabinogion of Lady Charlotte Guest,) Bogyn-Merodac-cap-Mogyn, (the black fiend son of 
Mogyn,) and a long list of bards and warriors, celebrated both in Wales and Armorica. 
The independent Princes of Mogyn long held out against the ruthless Kings of England, 
until finally Gam Mogyns made his submission to Prince Henry, son of Henry IV., and 
under the name of Sir David Gam de Mogyns, was distinguished at the battle of Agincourt. 
From him the present Baronet is descended. (And here the descent follows in order until 
it comes to) Thomas Muggins, first Baronet of Pontydwdlm Castle, for 23 years Member of 
Parliament for that borough, who had issue, Alured Mogyns Smyth, the present Baronet, 
who married Marian, daughter of the late General P. Flack, of Ballyflack, in the Kingdom 
of Ireland, of the Counts Flack of the H. R. Empire. Sir Alured has issue, Alured Cara- 
doc, born 1819, Marian, 1811, Blanche Adeliza, Emily Doria, Adelaide Obieans, Katinka, 
Rostopchin, Patrick Flack, died 1809. 

“ Arms — a mullion garbled, gules on a saltire reversed of the second. Crest — a tom-tit 
rampant regardant. Motto — Ung Roy ung Mogyfis.^* 

It was long before Lady de Mogyns shone as a star in the 
fashionable world. At first, poor Muggins was in the hands of 
the Flacks, the Clancys, the Tooles, the Shanahans, his wife’s 
Irish relations ; and whilst he was yet but heir-apparent, his 
house overflowed with claret and the national nectar, for the 
benefit of his Hibernian relatives. Tom Tufto absolutely left 
the street in which they lived in London, because he said “ it 
was infected with such a confounded smell of whiskey from the 
house of those Iwish people.” 

It was abroad that they learned to be genteel. They 
pushed into all foreign courts, and elbowed their way into the 
halls of Ambassadors. They pounced upon the stray nobility, 
and seized young lords travelling with their bear-leaders. 
They gave parties at Naples, Rome, and Paris. They got a 
Royal Prince to attend their soirees at the latter place, and it 
was here that they first appeared under the name of De 
Mogyns, which they bear with such splendor to this day. 

All sorts of stories are told of the desperate efforts made 
by the indomitable Lady de Mogyns to gain the place she now 
occupies, and those of my beloved readers who live in middle 
life, and are unacquainted with the frantic struggles, tl>e wicked 
feuds* iutrigues, cabals, and disappointments which, as I 


OJSr SOME RESPECTABLE SNOBS, 


33 


am given to understand, reign in the fashionable world, may 
bless their stars that they at least are not fashio7iahle Snobs. 
The intrigues set afoot by the De Mogyns to get the Duchess 
of Buckskin to her parties, would strike a Talleyrand with ad- 
miration. She had a brain fever after being disappointed of 
an invitation to Lady Aldermanbury’s the dansafit, and would 
have committed suicide but for a ball at V^adsor. I have the 
following story from my noble friend Lady Clapperclaw herself, 
— Lady Kathleen O’Shaughnessy that was, and daughter of the 
Earl of Turfanthunder : — 

‘‘When that ojous disguised Irishwoman, Lady Muggins, 
was struggling to take her place in the world, and was bringing 
out her hidjous daughter Blanche,’^ said old Lady Clapperclaw 
— “ Marian has a hump-back and doesn’t show, but she’s the 
only lady in the family — when that wretched Polly Muggins 
was bringing out Blanche, with her radish of a nose, and her 
carrots of ringlets, and her turnip for a face, she was most 
anxious — as her father had been a cow-boy on my father’s land 
— to be patronized by us, and asked me point-blank, in the 
midst of a silence at Count Volauvent’s, the French Ambassa- 
dor’s dinner, why I had not sent her a card for my ball ? 

“ ‘ Because my rooms are already too full, and your ladyship 
would be crowded inconveniently,’ says I ; indeed she takes up 
as much room as an elephant : besides I wouldn’t have her, 
and that was flat. 

“ I thought my answer was a settler to her : but the next day 
she comes weeping to my arms — ‘ Dear Lady Clapperclaw,’ 
says she, ‘it’s not for me ; I ask it for my blessed Blanche ! a 
young creature in her first season, and not at your ball ! My ten- 
der child will pine and die of vexation, /don’t want to come, 
/will stay at home to nurse Sir Alured in the gout. Mrs. 
Bolster is going, I know ; she will be Blanche’s chaperon.’ 

“ ‘ You wouldn’t subscribe for the Rathdrum blanket and 
potato fund ; you, who come out of the parish,’ says I, ‘and 
whose grandfather, honest man, kept cows there.’ 

“ Will twenty guineas be enough, dearest Lady Clapper- 
claw ? ” ' - ‘ • 

“ ‘ Twenty guineas is sufficient,’ says I, and she paid them ; 
so I said, ‘ Blanche may come, but not you, mind : ’ and she 
left me with a world of thanks. 

“ Would you believe it ? — when my ball came, the horrid 
woman made her appearance with her daughter ! ‘ Didn’t I tell 
you not to come ? ’ said I, in a mighty passion. ‘What Would 
the world have said ? ’ cries my Lady Muggins : my carriage is 


34 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


gone for Sir Alured to the Club ; let me stay only ten minutes, 
dearest Lady Clapperclaw.’ 

“ ‘ Well, as you are here, madam, you may stay and get 
your supper,’ I answered, and so left her, and never spoke a 
word more to her all night. 

And now,” screamed out old Lady Clapperclaw, clapping 
her hands, and speaking with more brogue than ever, ‘‘ what do 
you think, after all my kindness to her, the wicked, vulgar, 
odious, impudent upstart of a cow-boy’s granddaughter, has 
done } — she cut me yesterday in Hy’ Park, and hasn’t sent me 
a ticket for her ball to-night, though they say Prince George is 
to be there.” 

Yes, such is the fact. In the race of fashion the resolute 
and active De Mogyns has passed the poor old Clapperclaw. 
Her progress in gentility may be traced by the sets of friends 
whom she has courted, and made, and cut, and left behind her, 
She has struggled so gallantly for polite reputation that she 
has won it : pitilessly kicking down the ladder as she advanced 
degree by degree. 

Her Irish relations were first sacrificed ; she made her 
father dine in the steward’s room, to his perfect contentment : 
and would send Sir Alured thither likewise, but that he is a 
peg on which she hopes to hang her future honors ; and is, 
after all, paymaster of her daughter’s fortunes. He is meek 
and content. He has been so long a gentleman that he is used 
to it, and acts the part of governor very well. In the day-time 
he goes from the Union ” to ‘‘ Arthur’s,” and from “ Arthur’s ” 
to the “ Union.” He is a dead hand at piquet, and loses a 
very comfortable maintenance to some young fellows, at whist, 
at the “ Travellers’.” 

His son has taken his father’s seat in Parliament, and has 
of course joined Young England. He is the only man in the 
country who believes in the De Mogynses, and sighs for the 
days when a De Mogyns led the van of battle. He has written 
a little volume of spoony puny poems. He wears a lock of the 
hair of Laud, the Confessor and Martyr, and fainted when he 
kissed the Pope’s toe at Rome. He sleeps in white kid-gloves, 
and commits dangerous excesses upon green tea. 


G/^£A T CITY SNOBS. 


35 


CHAPTER VIIL 

GREAT CITY SNOBS. 

There is no disguising the fact that this series of papers is 
making a prodigious sensation among all classes in this Empire. 
Notes of admiration (!), of interrogation (?), of remonstrance, 
approval, or abuse, come pouring into Mr, Punch's box. We 
have been called to task for betraying the secrets of three dif- 
ferent families of De Mogyns ; no less than four Lady Susan 
Scrapers have been discovered ; and young gentlemen are 
quite shy of ordering half a pint of port and simpering over the 
Quarterly Review at the Club, lest they should be mistaken for 
Sydney Scraper, Esq. ‘‘ What can be your antipathy to Baker 
Street ? ’’ asks some fair remonstrant, evidently writing from 
that quarter. 

“ Why only attack the aristocratic Snobs ? ” says one esti- 
mable correspondent : “ are not the snobbish Snobs to have 
their turn } " — ‘‘ Pitch into the University Snobs ! '' writes an in- 
dignant gentleman (who spells elegaiit with two /’s). — ‘‘ Show 
up the Clerical Snobs,” suggests another. — ‘‘ Being at ^ Meu- 
rice’s Hotel,’ Paris, some time since,” some wag hints, “ I saw 
Lord B. leaning out of the window with his boots in his hand, 
and bawljng out, ‘ Gar^ofiy ch'ez-moi ces bottesl Oughtn’t he to 
be brought in among the Snobs ? ” 

No ; far from it. If his lordship’s boots are dirty, it is be- 
cause he is Lord B., and walks. There is nothing snobbish in 
having only one pair of boots, or a favorite pair ; and certainly 
nothing snobbish in desiring to have them cleaned. Lord B., 
in so doing, performed a perfectly natural and gentlemanlike 
action ; for which I am so pleased with hiln that I have had him 
designed in a favorable and elegant attitude, and put at the 
head of this Chapter in the place of honor. No, we are not 
personal in these candid remarks. As Phidias took the pick 
of a score of beauties before he completed a Venus, so have we 
to examine, perhaps, a thousand Snobs, before one is expressed 
upon paper. 

Great City Snobs are the next in the hierarchy, and ought 
to be considered. But here is a difficulty. The great City 
Snob is commonly most difficult of access. Unless you are a 
capitalist, you cannot visit him in the recesses of his bank par- 


3 ^ 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


lor in Lombard Street. Unless you are a sprig of nobility 
there is little hope of seeing him at home. In a great City 
Snob firm there is generally one partner whose name is down 
for charities, and who frequents Exeter Hall ; you may catch a 
glimpse of another (a scientific City Snob) at my Lord N — ’s 
soirees, or the lectures of the London Institution ; of a third (a 
City Snob of taste) at picture-auctions, at private views of 
exhibitions, or at the Opera or the Philharmonic. But intimacy 
is impossible, in most cases, with this grave, pompous, and 
awful being. 

A mere gentleman may hope to sit at almost anybody’s 
table — to take his place at my lord duke’s in the country — to 
dance a quadrille at Buckingham Palace itself — (beloved Lady 
Wilhelmina Waggle-wiggle ! do you recollect the sensation we 
made at the ball of our late adored Sovereign Queen Caroline, 
at Brandenburg House, Hammersmith ?) but the City Snob’s 
doors are, for thi most part, closed to him ; and hence all that 
one knows of this great class is mostly from hearsay. 

In other countries of Europe, the Banking Snob is more 
expansive and communicative than with us, and receives all the 
world into his circle. For instance, everybody knows the 
princely hospitalities of the Scharlaschild family at Paris, Na- 
ples, Frankfort, They entertain all the world, even the 
poor, at their fetes. Prince Polonia, at Rome, and his brother, 
the Duke of Strachino, are also remarkable for their hospitali- 
ties. I like the spirit of the first-named nobleman. Titles 
not costing much in the Roman territory, he hast had the 
head clerk of the banking-house made a Marquis, and his 
Lordship will screw a bajocco out of you in exchange as dexter- 
ously as any commoner could do. It is a comfort to be able 
to gratify such grandees with a farthing or two ; it makes the 
poorest man feel that he can do good. The Polonias have in- 
termarried with the greatest and most ancient families of Rome, 
and you see their heraldic cognizance (a mushroom or on an 
azure field) quartered in a hundred places in the City, with the 
arms of the Colonnas and Dorias. 

Our City Snobs have the same mania for aristocratic mar- 
riages. I like to see such. I am of a savage and envious nature, 
— I like to see these two humbugs which, dividing, as they do, 
the social empire of this kingdom between them, hate each 
other naturally, making truce and uniting, for the sordid inter- 
ests of either. I like to see an old aristocrat, swelling with 
pride of race, the descendant of illustrious Norman robbers, 
whose blood has been pure for centuries, and who looks down 


GREA T CITY SNOBS. 


37 


upon common Englishmen as a free-born American does on a 
nigger, — I like to, see old Stiffneck obliged to bow down his 
head and swallow his infernal pride, and drink the cup of 
humiliation poured out by Pump and Aldgate’s butler. “ Pump 
and Aldgate,’’ says he, “ your grandfather was a bricklayer, 
and his hod is still kept in the bank. Your pedigree begins in 
a workhouse ; mine can be dated from all the royal palaces of 
Europe. I came over with the Conqueror ; I am ov;n cousin 
to Charles Martel, Orlando Furioso, Philip Augustus, Peter the 
Cruel, and Frederick Barbarossa. I quarter the Royal Arms 
of Brentford in my coat. I despise you, but I want money ; 
and I will sell you my beloved daughter, Blanche Stiffneck, 
for a hundred thousand pounds, to pay off my mortgages. Let 
your son marry her, and she shall become Lady Blanche Pump 
and Aldgate.^^ 

Old Pump and Aldgate clutches at the bargain. And a com- 
fortable thing it is to think that birth can be bought for money. 
So you learn to value it. Why should we, who don’t possess it, 
set a higher store on it than those who do ? Perhaps the best 
use of that book, the “Peerage,” is to look down the list, and 
see how many have bought and sold birth, — how poor sprigs 
of nobility somehow sell themselves to rich City Snobs’ daugh- 
ters, how rich City S ;obs purchase noble ladies — and so to 
admire the double baseness of the bargain. 

Old Pump and Aldgate buys the article and pays the 
money. The sale of the girl’s person is blessed by a Bishop 
at St. George’s, Hanover Square, and next year you read, “ At 
Roehampton, on Saturday, the Lady Blanche Pump, of a son 
and heir.” 

After this interesting event, some old acquaintance, who 
saw young Pump in the parlor at the bank in the City, said to 
him, familiarly, “ How’s your wife. Pump, my boy ? ” 

Mr. Pump looked exceedingly puzzled and disgusted, and, 
after a pause, said, “ Lady JBlafiche Pump is pretty well, I thank 
you.” 

“ Oh^ I thought she was your wife said the familiar brute, 
Snooks, wishing him good-by ; and ten minutes after, the story 
was all over the Stock Exchange, where it is told, when young 
Pump appears, to this very day. 

We can imagine the weary life this poor Pump, this martyr 
to Mammon, is compelled to undergo. Fancy the domestic 
enjoyments of a man who has a wife who scorns him ; who 
cannot see his own friends in his own house ; who having de- 
serted the middle rank of life, is not yet admitted to the higher \ 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


38 

but who is resigned to rebuffs and delay and humiliation, con- 
tented to think that his son will be more fortunate. 

It used to be the custom of some very old-fashioned clubs 
in this City, when a gentleman asked for change for a guinea, 
always to bring it to him in washed silver : that which had 
passed immediately out of the hands of the vulgar being con- 
sidered ‘‘as too coarse to soil a gentleman’s fingers.’^ So, 
when the City Snob’s money has been washed during a genera- 
tion or so ; has been washed into estates, and woods, and 
castles, and town mansions, it is allowed to pass current as real 
aristocratic coin. Old Pump sweeps a shop, runs of messages, 
becomes a confidential clerk and partner. Pump the Second 
becomes chief of the house, spins more and more money, mar- 
ries his son to an Earl’s daughter. Pump Tertius goes on with 
the bank ; but his chief business in life is to become the father 
of Pump Quartus, who comes out a full-blown aristocrat, and 
takes his seat as Baron Pumpington, and his race rules heredi- 
tarily over this nation of Snobs. 


CHAPTER IX. 

ON SOME MILITARY SNOBS. 

As no society in the world is more agreeable than that^ of 
well-bred and well-informed military gentlemen,^ so, likewise, 
none is more insufferable than that of Military Snobs. They 
are to be found of all grades, from the General Officer, whose 
padded old breast twinkles over with a score of stars, clasps, 
and decorations, to the budding cornet, who is shaving for a 
beard, and has just been appointed to the Saxe-Coburg Lan- 
cers. 

I have always admired that dispensation of rank in our 
country, which sets up this last-named little creature (who was 
flogged only last week because he could not spell) to command 
great whiskered warriors, who have faced all dangers of climate 
and battle ; which, because he has money to lodge at the 
agent’s, will place him over the heads of men who have a 
thousand times more experience and desert ; and which, in 
the course of time, will bring him all the honors of his pro- 
fession, when the veteran soldier he commanded has got no 


ON SOME MILITARY SNOBS, 


39 


Other reward for his bravery than a berth in Chelsea Hospital, 
and the veteran officer he superseded has slunk into shabby 
retirement, and ends his disappointed life on a threadbare half- 
pay. 

When I read in the Gazette such announcements as “ Lieu- 
tenant and Captain Grig, from the Bombardier Guards, to be 
Captain, vice Grizzle, who retires,’^ I know what becomes of 
the Peninsular Grizzle ; I follow him in spirit to the humble, 
country town, where he takes up his quarters, and occupies him- 
self with the most desperate attempts to live like a gentleman, 
on the stipend of half a tailor’s foreman ; and I picture to my- 
self little Grig rising from rank to rank, skipping from one 
regiment to another, with an increased grade in each, avoiding 
disagreeable foreign service, and ranking as a colonel at thirty ; 
— all because he has money, and Lord Grigsby is his father, 
who had the same luck before him. Grig must blush at first 
to give his orders to old men in every way his betters. And 
as it is very difficult for a spoiled child to escape being selfish 
and arrogant, so it is a very hard task indeed for this spoiled 
child of fortune not to be a Snob. 

It must have often been a matter of wonder to the candid 
reader, that the army, the most enormous job of all our politi- 
cal institutions, should yet work so well in the field ; and we 
must cheerfully give Grig, and his like, the credit for courage 
which they display whenever occasion calls for it. The Duke’s 
dandy regiments fought as well as any (they said better than any, 
but that is absurd). The great Duke himself was a dandy once, 
and jobbed on, as Marlborough did before him. But this only 
proves that dandies are brave as well as other Britons — as all 
Britons. Let us concede that the high-born Grig rode into the 
entrenchments at Sobraon as gallantly as Corporal Wallop, the 
ex-ploughboy. 

The times of war are more favorable to him than the periods 
of peace. Think of Grig’s life in the Bombardier Guards, or- 
the Jackboot Guards; his marches from Windsor to Lcwidon, 
irom London to Windsor, from Knightsbridge to Regent’s 
Park ; the idiotic services he has to perform, which consist in 
inspecting the pipeclay of his company, or the horses in the stable, 
or bellowing out Shoulder humps ! Carry humps ! ” all which 
duties the very smallest intellect that ever belonged to mortal 
man would suffice to comprehend. The professional duties of a 
footman are quite as difficult and various. The red-jackets 
who hold gentlemen’s horses in St. James’s Street could do the 
work just as well as those vacuous, good-natured, gentleman- 


40 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


like, rickety little lieutenants, who may be seen Sauntering 
about Pall Mall, in high-heeled little boots, or rallying round 
the standard of their regiment in the Palace Court, at eleven 
o’clock, when the band plays. Did the beloved reader ever 
see one of the young fellows staggering under the flag, or, above 
all, going through the operation of saluting it ? It is worth a 
walk to the Palace to witness that magni&ent piece of tom- 
foolery. 

I have had the honor of meeting once or twice an old gentle- 
man, whom I look upon to be a specimen of army-training, and 
who has served in crack regiments, or commanded them, all his 
life. I allude to Lieutenant-General the Honorable Sir George 
Granby Tufto, K.C.B., K.T.S., K.H., K.S.W., &c., &c. His 
manners are irreproachable generally ; in society he is 'a perfect 
gentleman, and a most thorough Snob. 

A man can’t help being a fool, be he ever so old, and Sir 
George is a greater ass at sixty-eight than he was when he first 
entered the army at fifteen. He distinguished himself every- 
where : his name is mentioned with praise in a score of Ga- 
zettes : he is the man, in fact, whose padded breast, twinkling 
over with innumerable decorations, has already been introduced 
to the reader. It is difficult to say what virtues this prosperous 
gentleman possesses. He never read a book in his life, and, 
with his purple, old gouty fingers, still writes a school-boy hand. 
He has reached old age and gray hairs without being the least 
venerable. He dresses like an outrageously young man to the 
present moment, and laces and pads his old carcass as if he 
were still handsome George Tufto of 1800. He is selfish, bru- 
tal, passionate, and a glutton. It is curious to mark him at 
table, and see him heaving in his waistband, his little bloodshot 
eyes gloating over his meal. He swears considerably in his 
talk, and tells filthy garrison stories after dinner. On account 
of his rank and his services, people pay the bestarred and be- 
titled old brute a sort of reverence ; and he looks down upon 
you and me, and exhibits his contempt for us, with a stupid 
and artless candor which is quite amusing to watch. Perhaps, 
had he been bred to another profession, he would not have 
been the disreputable old creature he now is. But what other > 
He was fit for none ; too incorrigibly idle and dull for any trade 
but this, in which he has distinguished himself publicly as a 
good and gallant officer, and privately for riding races, drink- 
ing port, fighting duels, and seducing women. He believes 
himself to be one of the most honorable and deserving beings 
in the world. About Waterloo Place, of afternoons, you may 


MILITARY SMORS, 


4t 

see him tottering in his varnished boots, and leering under the 
bonnets of the women who pass by. When he dies of apoplexy, 
The Times will have a quarter of a column about his services 
and battles — four lines of print will be wanted to describe his 
titles and orders alone — and the earth will cover one of the 
wickedest and dullest old wretches that ever strutted over it. 

Lest it should be imagined that I am of so obstinate a 
misanthropic nature as to be satisfied with nothing, I beg (for 
the comfort of the forces) to state my belief that the army is 
not composed of such persons as the above. He has only 
been selected for the study of civilians and the military, as 
a specimen of a prosperous and bloated army Snob. No : 
when epaulets are not sold ; when corporal punishments are 
abolished, and Corporal Smith has-./ chance to have his gal- 
lantry rewarded as well as that of Lieutenant Grig ; when there 
is no such rank as ensign and lieutenant (the existence of which 
rank is an absurd anomaly, and an insult upon all the rest of 
the army), and should there be no war, I should not be dis- 
inclined to be a major-general myself. 

I have a little sheaf of Army Snobs in my portfolio, but shall 
pause in my attack upon the forces till next week. 


CHAPTER. X. 

MILITARY SNOBS. 

Walking in the Park yesterday with my young friend Tagg, 
and discoursing with him upon the next number of the Snob, 
at the very nick of time who should pass us but two very good 
specimens of Military Snobs, — the Sporting Military Snob, 
Capt. Rag, and the “ larking or raffish Military Snob, Ensign 
Famish. Indeed you are fully sure to meet them lounging on 
horseback about five o’clock, under the trees by the Ser- 
pentine, examining critically the inmates of the flashy brough- 
ams which parade up and down the Lady’s Mile.” 

Tagg and Rag are very well acquainted, and so the former, 
with that candor inseparable from intimate friendship, told me 
his dear friend’s history. Captain Rag is a small dapper north- 
country man. He went when quite a boy into a crack light 
cavalry regiment, and by the time he got his troop, had cheated 
all his brother officers so completely, selling them lame horses 


42 


THE BOOK OF SHOBB, 


for sound ones, and winning their money by all manner of 
strange and ingenious contrivances, that his Colonel advised 
him to retire ; which he did without much reluctance, accom- 
modating a youngster, who had just entered the regiment, with 
a glandered charger at an uncommonly stiff figure. 

He has since devoted his time to billiards, steeple-chasing, 
and the turf. His head-quarters are “ Rummer’s,’’ in Conduit 
Street, where he keeps his kit ; but he is ever on the move in 
the exercise of his vocation as a gentleman-jockey and gentle- 
man-leg. 

According to BelVs Life^ he is an invariable attendant at all 
races, and an actor in most of them. He rode the winner at 
Leamington ; he was left for dead in a ditch a fortnight ago 
at Harrow; and yet ther^^he was, last week, at the Croix de 
Berny, pale and determined as ever, astonishing the badauds 
of Paris by the elegance of his seat and the neatness of his rig, 
as he took a preliminary gallop on that vicious brute “ The 
Disowned,” before starting for “ the French Grand National.” 

He is a regular attendant at the Corner, where he compiles 
a limited but comfortable libretto. During the season he rides 
often in the Park, mounted on a clever, well-bred pony. He 
is to be seen escorting that celebrated horsewoman, Fanny 
Highflyer, or in confidential converse with Lord Thimblerig, 
the eminent handicapper. 

He carefully avoids decent society, and would rather dine 
off a steak at the Old Tun ” with Sam Snaffle the jockey. 
Captain O’Rourke, and two or three other notorious turf rob- 
bers, than with the choicest company in London. He likes to 
announce at “ Rummer’s ” that he is going to run down and 
spend his Saturday and Sunday in a friendly way with Hocus, 
the leg, at his little box near Pipsom : where, if report speak 
true, many ‘‘ rummish plants ” are concocted. 

He does not play billiards often, and never in public : but 
when he does play, he always contrives to get hold of a good 
flat, and never leaves him till he has done him uncommonly 
brown. Fie has lately been playing a good deal with P'amish. 

When he makes his appearance in the drawing-room, which 
occasionally happens at a hunt-meeting or a race-ball, he enjoys 
himself extremely. 

His young friend is Ensign Famish, who is not a little 
pleased to be seen with such a smart fellow as Rag, who bows 
to the best turf company in the Park. Rag lets Famish accom- 
pany him to Tattersall’s, and sells him bargains in horse-flesh, 
and uses Famish’s cab. That young gentleman’s regiment is 


MILITARY SNOBS. 


43 


in India, and he is at home on sick leavOi He recruits his 
health by being intoxicated every night, and fortifies his lungs, 
which are weak, by smoking cigars all day. The policemen 
about the Haymarket know the little creature, and the early 
cabmen salute him. The closed doors of fish and lobster shops 
open after service, and vomit out little Famish, who is either 
tipsy and quarrelsome — when he wants to fight the cabmen; 
or drunk and helpless — when some kind friend (in yellow satin) 
takes care of him. All the neighborhood, the cabmen, the 
police, the early potato-men, and the friends in yellow satin, 
know the young fellow, and he is called little Bobby by some 
of the very worst reprobates in Europe. 

His mother. Lady Fanny Famish, believes devotedly that 
Robert is in London solely for the benefit of consulting the 
physician ; is going to have him exchanged into a dragoon 
regiment, which doesn’t go to that odious India ; and has an 
idea that his chest is delicate, and that he takes gruel every 
evening, when he puts his feet in hot water. Her Ladyship 
resides at Cheltenham, and is of a serious turn. 

Bobby frequents the Union-Jack Club ” of course ; where 
he breakfasts on pale ale and devilled kidneys at three o’clock ; 
where beardless young heroes of his own sort congregate, and 
make merry, and give each other dinners ; where you may see 
half a dozen of young rakes of the fourth or fifth order loung- 
ing and smoking on the steps ; where you behold Slapper’s long- 
tailed leggy mare in the custody of a red-jacket until the Captain 
is primed for the Park with a glass of curagoa ; and where 
you see Hobby of the Highland Buffs, driving up with Dobby, 
of the Madras Fusiliers, in the great banging, swinging cab, 
which the latter hires from Rumble of Bond Street. 

In fact. Military Snobs are of such number and variety, that 
a hundred weeks of Furich would not suffice to give an audi- 
ence to them. There is, besides the disreputable old Military 
Snob, who has seen service, the respectable old Military Snob, 
who has seen none, and gives himself the most prodigious 
Martinet airs. There is the Medical-Military Snob, who is 
generally more outrageously military in his conversation than 
the greatest in the army. There is the Heavy-Dragoon 

Snob, whom young ladies admire, with his great stupid pink 
face and yellow mustaches — a vacuous, solemn, foolish, but 
brave and honorable Snob. There is the Amateur-Military 
Snob, who writes Captain on his card because he is a Lieu- 
tenant in the Bungay Militia. There is a Lady-killing Military 
Snob ; and more, who need not be named. 


44 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


But let no man, we repeat, charge Mr, Punch with disre- 
spect for the army in general — that gallant and judicious Army, 
every man which, from F. M. the Duke of Wellington, &c., 
downwards — (with the exception of H. R. H. Field-Marshal 
Prince Albert, who, however, can hardly count as a military 
man,) — reads Punch in every quarter of the globe. 

Let those civilians who sneer at the acquirements of the 
Army read Sir Harry Smith's account of the battle of Aliwal. 
A noble deed was never told in nobler language. And you who 
doubt if chivalry exists, or the age of heroism has passed by, 
think of Sir Henry Hardinge, with his son, Dear little Arthur,’* 
riding in front of the lines at Ferozeshah. I hope no English 
painter will endeavor to illustrate that scene ; for who is there 
to do justice to it ? The history of the world contains no more 
brilliant and heroic picture. No, no ; the men who perform 
these deeds with such brilliant valor, and describe them with 
such modest manliness — such are not Snobs. Their country 
admires them, their Sovereign rewards them, and Pimch., the 
universal railer, takes off his hat and says. Heaven save tliem ! 


CHAPTER XL 

ON CLERICAL SNOBS. 

After Snobs-Military, Snobs-Clerical suggest themselves 
quite naturally, and it is clear that, with every respect for the 
cloth, yet having a regard for truth, humanity, and the British 
public, such a vast and influential class must not be omitted 
from our notices of the great Snob world. 

Of these Clerics there are some whose claim to snobbish- 
ness is undoubted, and yet it cannot be discussed here ; for the 
same reason that Punch would not set up his show in a Cathe- 
dral, out of respect for the solemn service celebrated within. 
There are some places where he acknowledges himself not 
privileged to make a noise, and puts away his show, and 
silences his drum, and takes off his hat, and holds his peace. 

And I know this, that if there are some Clerics who do 
wrong, there are straightway a thousand newspapers to haul up 
those unfortunates, and cry, Fie upon them, fie upon them ! ” 
while, though the press is always ready to yell and bellow excoiU’ 


ON CLERICAL SNOBS. 


45 


munication against these stray delinquent parsons, it somehow 
takes very little count of the many good ones — of the tens of 
thousands of honest men, who lead Christian lives, who give to 
the poor generously, who deny themselves rigidly, and live and 
die in their duty, without ever a newspaper paragraph in their 
favor. My beloved friend and reader, I wish you and I could 
do the same : and let me whisper my belief, ent?'e noiis, that of 
those eminent philosophers who cry out against parsons the 
loudest, there are not many who have not their knowledge of 
the church by going thither often. 

But you who have ever listened to village bells, or have 
walked to church as children on sunny Sabbath mornings ; you 
who have ever seen the parson^s wife tending the poor man’s 
bedside ; or the town clergyman threading the dirty stairs of 
noxious alleys upon his sacred business ; do not raise a shout 
when one of these falls away, or yell with the mob that howls 
after him. 

Every man can do that. When old Father Noah was over- 
taken in his cups, there was only one of his sons that dared to 
make merry at his disaster, and he was not the mos^ virtuous of 
the family. Let us too turn away silently, not huzza like a par- 
cel of school-boys, because some big young rebel suddenly 
starts up and whops the schoolmaster. 

I confess, though, if I had by me the names of those seven 
or eight Irish bishops, the probates of whose wills were men- 
tioned in last year’s journals, and who died leaving behind them 
some two hundred thousand pounds apiece — I would like to 
put them up as patrons of my Clerical Snobs, and operate upon 
them as successfully as I see from the newspapers Mr. Eisen- 
berg. Chiropodist, has lately done upon ‘‘ His Grace the Right 
Reverend Lord Bishop of Tapioca.” 

And I confess that when those Right Reverend Prelates 
come up to the gates of Paradise with their probates of wills in 
their hands I think that their chance is * * * * But the 
gates of Paradise is a far way to follow their Lordships ; so let 
us trip down again, lest awkward questions be asked there about 
our own favorite vices too. 

And don’t let us give way to the vulgar prejudice*, that 
clergymen are an over-paid and luxurious body of men. When 
that eminent ascetic, the late Sydney Smith — (by the way, by 
what law of nature is it that so many Smiths in this world are 
called Sydney Smith ?) — lauded the system of great prizes in 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


46 

the Church, — without which he said gentlemen would not be 
induced to follow the clerical profession, he admitted most 
pathetically that the clergy in general were by no means to be 
envied for their worldly prosperity. From reading the works 
of some modern WTiters of repute, you would fancy that a par- 
son’s life was passed in gorging himself with plum-pudding and 
port-wine ; and that his Reverence’s fat chaps were always greasy 
with the crackling of tithe pigs. Caricaturists delight to repre- 
sent him so : round, short-necked, pimple-faced, apoplectic, 
bursting out of waistcoat, like a black-pudding, a shovel-hatted 
fuzz-wigged Silenus. Whereas, if you take the real man, the 
poor fellow’s flesh-pots are very scantily furnished with meat. 
He labors commonly for a wage that a tailor’s foreman would 
despise : he has, too, such claims upon his dismal income as 
most philosophers would rather grumble to meet ; many tithes 
are levied upon his pocket, let it be remembered, by those who 
grudge him his means of livelihood. He has to dine with the 
Squire : and his wife must dress neatly ; and he must ‘‘ look 
like a gentleman,” as they call it, and bring up his six great 
hungry sons as such. Add to this, if he does his duty, he has 
such temptations to spend his money as no mortal man could 
withstand. Yes ; you who can’t resist purchasing a chest of 
cigars, because they are so good ; or an ormolu clock at Howell 
and James’s, because it is such a bargain ; or a box at the Opera, 
because Lablache and Grisi are divine in the Furitafii ; fancy 
how difficult it is for a parson to resist spending a half-crown 
when John Breakstone’s family are without a loaf ; or “ stand- 
ing ” a bottle of port for poor old Polly Rabbits, who has her 
thirteenth child ; or treating himself to a suit of corduroys for 
little Bob Scarecrow, whose breeches are sadly out at elbows. 
Think of these temptations, brother moralists and philosophers, 
and don’t be too hard on the parson. 

But what is this ? Instead of “ showing up ” the parsons, 
are we indulging in maudlin praises of that monstrous black- 
coated race.? O saintly Francis, lying at rest under the turf ; 
O Jimmy, and Johnny, and Willy, friends of my youth ! O noble 
and dear old Elias ! how should he who knows you not respect 
you and your calling ? May this pen never write a pennyworth 
again, if it ever casts ridicule upon either I 


ON CLERICAL SNOBS AND SNOBBISHNESS. 


47 


CHAPTER XII. 

ON CLERICAL SNOBS AND SNOBBISHNESS. 

‘‘ Dear Mr. Snob/’ an amiable young correspondent writes, 
who signs himself Snobling, ought the clergyman who, at the 
request of a noble Duke, lately interrupted a marriage ceremony 
between two persons perfectly authorized to marry, to be ranked 
or not among the Clerical Snobs ? ” 

This, my dear young friend, is not a fair question. One of 
the illustrated weekly papers has already seized hold of the 
clergyman, and blackened him most unmercifully, by represent^ 
ing him in his cassock performing the marriage service. Let 
that be sufficient punishment ; and, if you jDlease, do not press 
the query. 

It is very likely that if Miss Smith had come with a license 
to marry Jones, the parson in question, not seeing old Smith 
present, would have sent off the beadle in a cab to let the old 
gentleman know what was going on ; and would have delayed 
the service until the arrival of Smith senior. He very likely 
thinks it his duty to ask all marriageable young ladies, who come 
without their papa, why their parent is absent ; and, no doubt, 
always sends off the beadle for that missing governor. 

Or, it is very possible that the Duke of Coeurdelion was Mr. 
What-d’ye-cairim’s most intimate friend, and has often said to 
him, ‘‘ What-d’yc-caU’im, my boy, my daughter must never marry 
the Capting. If ever they try at your church, I beseech you, 
considering the terms of intimacy on which we are, to send off 
Ratta,n in a hack-cab to fetch me.” 

In either of which cases, you see, dear Snobling, that though 
the parson would not have been authorized, yet he might have 
been excused for interfering. He has no more right to stop my 
marriage than to stop my dinner, to both of which, as a free-born 
Briton, I am entitled by law, if I can pay for them. But, con- 
sider pastoral solicitude, a deep sense of the duties of his office 
and pardon this inconvenient, but genuine zeal. 

But if the clergyman did in the Duke’s case what he would 
not do in Smith’s ; if he has no more acquaintance with the 
Coeurdelion family than I have with the Royal and Serene 
House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, — thm.^ I confess, my dear Snob- 
ling, your question might elicit a disagreeable reply, and one 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


which I respectfully decline to give. I wonder what Sir George 
Tufto would say, if a sentry left his post because a noble lord 
(not in the least connected with the service) begged the sentinel 
not to do his duty ! 

Alas ! that the beadle who canes little boys and drives them 
out, cannot drive worldliness out too ; and what is worldliness 
but snobbishness ? When, for instance, I read in the news- 
papers that the Right Reverend the Lord Charles James ad- 
ministered the rite of confirmation to a party of the juvenile 
7iobility at the Chapel Royal, — as if the Chapel Royal were a 
sort of ecclesiastical Almack’s, and young people were to get 
ready for the next world in little exclusive genteel knots of the 
aristocracy, who were not to be disturbed in their journey 
thither by the company of the vulgar : — when I read shell a 
paragraph as that (and one or two such generally appear during 
the present fashionable season), it seems to me to be the most 
odious, mean, and disgusting part of that odious, mean, and 
disgusting publication, the Court Circular ; and that snobbish- 
ness is therein carried to quite an awful pitch. What, gentle- 
men, can’t we^even in the Church acknowledge a republic.? 
There, at least, the Heralds’ College itself might allow that we 
all of us have the same pedigree, and are direct descendants of 
Eve and Adam, whose inheritance is divided amongst us. 

I hereby call upon all Dukes, Earls, Baronets, and other 
potentates, not to lend themselves to this shameful scandal and 
error, and beseech all Bishops Avho read this publication to take 
the matter into consideration, and to protest against the con- 
tinuance of the practice, and to declare, ^‘We wonP confirm or 
christen Lord Tomnoddy, or Sir Carnaby Jenks, to the exclu- 
sion of any other young Christian ; ” the which declaration if 
their Lordships are induced to make, a great lapis ofjensionis 
will be removed, and the Snob Papers will not have been 
written in vain. 

A story is current of a celebrated nouveau-riche^ who having 
had occasion to oblige that excellent prelate the Bishop of 
Bullocksmithy, asked his Lordship, in return, to confirm his 
children privately in his Lordship’s own chapel ; which ceremony 
the grateful prelate accordingly performed. Can satire go 
farther than this .? Is there even in this most amusing of prints, 
any more naive absurdity ? It is as if a man wouldn’t go to 
heaven unless he went in a special train, or as if he thought 
(as some people think about vaccination) Confirmation more 
effectual when administered at first hand. When that eminent 
person, the Begum Sumroo, died, it is said she left ten thpu- 


ON CLERICAL SNOBS AND SNOBBISHNESS, 


49 


sand pounds to the. Pope, and ten thousand to the Archbishop 
of Canterbury, — so that there should be no mistake, — so as to 
make sure of having the ecclesiastical authorities on her side. 
This is only a little more openly and undisguisedly snobbish 
than the cases before alluded to. A well-bred Snob is just as 
secretly proud of his riches and honors as a parvenu Snob who 
makes the most ludicrous exhibition of them ; and a high-born 
Marchioness or Duchess just as vain of herself and her dia- 
monds, as Queen Quashyboo, who sews a pair of epaulets on 
to her skirt, and turns out in state in a cocked hat and feathers. 

It is not out of disrespect to my ‘‘ Peerage,^^ which I love 
and honor, (indeed, have I not said before, that I should be 
ready to jump out of my skin if two Dukes would walk down 
Pall Mall with me ?) — it is not out of disrespect for the individu- 
als, that I wish these titles had never been invented ; but, con- 
sider, if there were no tree, there would be no shadow ; and how 
much more honest society would be, and how much more 
serviceable the clergy would be (which is our present considera- 
tion), if these temptations of rank and continual baits of world- 
liness were not in existence, and perpetually thrown out to 
lead them astray. 

I have seen many examples of their falling away. When, 
for instance, Tom Sniffle first went into the country as Curate 
for Mr. Fuddleston (Sir Huddleston Fuddleston’s brother), 
who resided on some other living, there could not be a more 
kind, hard-working, and excellent creature than Tom. He had 
his aunt to live with him. His conduct to his poor was admi- 
rable. He wrote annually reams of the best-intentioned and 
most vapid sermons. When Lord Brandyball’s family first 
came down into the country, and invited him to dine at Brandy- 
ball Park, Sniffle was so agitated that he almost forgot how to 
say grace, and upset a bowl of currant-jelly sauce in Lady 
Fanny Toffy’s lap. 

What was the consequence of his intimacy with that noble 
family ? Fie quarrelled with his aunt for dining out every night. 
The wretch forgot his poor altogether, and killed his old nag 
by always riding over to Brandyball ; where he revelled in the 
maddest passion for Lady Fanny. He ordered the neatest new 
clothes and ecclesiastical waistcoats from London ; he appeared 
with corazza-shirts, lackered boots, and perfumery ; he bought 
a blood-horse from Bob Toffy : was seen at archery meetings, 
public breakfasts, — actually at cover; and, I blush to say, that 
I saw him in a stall at the Opera ; and afterwards riding by 
Lady Fanny’s side in Rotten Row. He double-barrelled his 

4 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


SO 

name (as many poor Snobs do), and instead of T. Sniffle, as 
formerly, came out, in a porcelain card, as Rev. T. D’Arcy 
Sniffle, Burlington Hotel. 

The end of all this may be imagined : when the earl of 
Brandyball was made acquainted with the curate’s love for 
Lady Fanny, he had that fit of the gout which so nearly carried 
him off (to the inexpressible grief of his son. Lord Alicompayne), 
and uttered that remarkable speech to Sniffle, which disposed 
of the claims of the latter : — “ If I didn’t respect the Church, 
Sir,” his Lordship said, “by Jove, I’d kick you down stairs:’^ 
his Lordship then fell back into the fit aforesaid ; and Lady 
Fanny, as we all know, married General Podager. 

As for poor Tom, he was over head and ears in debt as well 
as in love : his creditors came down upon him. Mr. Hemp, of 
Portugal Street, proclaimed his name lately as a reverend out- 
law ; and he has been seen at various foreign watering-places ; 
sometimes doing duty; sometimes “coaching” a stray gentle- 
man's son at Carlsruhe or Kissingen ; sometimes — must we say 
it ? — lurking about the roulette-tables with a tuft to his chin. 

If temptation had not come upon this unhappy fellow in the 
shape of a Lord Brandyball, he might still have been following 
his profession, humbly and worthily. He might have married 
his cousin with four thousand pounds, the wine merchant’s 
daughter (the old gentleman quarrelled with his nephew for 
not soliciting wine orders from Lord B. for him) : he might have 
had seven children, and taken private pupils, and eked out his 
income, and lived and died a country parson. 

Could he have done better.^ You who want to knowhow 
great, and good, and noble such a character may be read 
Stanley’s “ Life of Doctor Arnold.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 

ON CLERICAL SNOBS. 

Among the varieties of the Snob Clerical, the University 
Snob and the Scholastic Snob ought never to be forgotten ; 
they form a very strong battalion in the black-coated army. 

The wisdom of our ancestors (which I admire more and 
more every day) seemed to have determined that the education 
of youth was so paltry and unimportant a matter^ that almost 


ON CLERICAL RNOBS. 


SI 


any man, armed with a birch and a regulation cassock and 
degree, might undertake the charge : and many an honest 
country gentleman may be found to the present day, who takes 
very good care to have a character with his butler when he 
engages him, and will not purchase a horse without the strongest 
warranty and the closest inspection ; but sends off his son, 
young John Thomas, to school without asking any questions 
about the Schoolmaster, and places the lad at Switchester Col- 
lege, under Doctor Block, because he (the good old English 
gentleman) had been at Switchester, under Doctor Buzwig, 
forty years ago. 

We have a love for all the little boys at school ; for many 
scores of thousands of them read and love Fimch : — may he 
never write a word that shall not be honest and fit for them to 
read ! He will not have his young friends to be Snobs in the 
future, or to be bullied by Snobs, or given over to such to be 
educated. Our connection with the youth at the Universities 
is very close and affectionate. The candid undergraduate is 
our friend. The pompous old College Don trembles in his 
common room, lest we should attack him and show him up as 
a Snob. 

When railroads were threatening to invade the land which 
they have since conquered, it may be recollected what a shriek- 
ing and outcry the authorities of Oxford and Eton made, lest 
the iron abominations should come near those seats of pure 
learning, and tempt the British youth astray. The supplica- 
tions were in vain ; the railroad is in upon them, and the old- 
world institutions are doomed. I felt charmed to read in the 
papers the other day a most veracious puffing advertisement 
headed, “ To College and back for Five Shillings.’^ “ The 
College Gardens (it said) will be thrown open on this occasion ; 
the College youths will perform a regatta ; the Chapel of King^s 
College will have its celebrated music ; — and all for five shil- 
lings ! The Goths have got into Rome ; Napoleon Stephenson 
draws his republican lines round the sacred old cities ; and the 
ecclesiastical big-wigs who garrison them must prepare to lay 
down key and crozier before the iron conqueror. 

If you consider, dear reader, what profound snobbishness 
the University System produced, you will allow that it is time 
to attack some of those feudal middle-age superstitions. If 
you go down for five shillings to look at the ‘‘ College Youths,’’ 
you may see one cneaking down the court without a tassel 
to his cap ; another with a gold or silver fringe to his velvet 
trencher ; a third lad with a master’s gown and hat, walking at 


52 


THE booe: of snobs. 


ease over the sacred College grass-plots, which common men 
must not tread on. 

He may do it because he is a nobleman. Because a lad is 
a lord, the University gives him a degree at the end of two 
years which another is seven in acquiring. Because he is a 
lord, he has no call to go through an examination. Any man 
who has not been to College and back for five shillings, would 
not believe in such distinctions in a place of education, so 
absurd and monstrous do they seem to be. 

The lads with gold and silver lace are sons of rich gentle- 
men, and called Fellow Commoners ; they are privileged to 
feed better than the pensioners, and to have wine with their 
victuals, which the latter can only get in their rooms. 

The unlucky boys who have no tassels to their caps, are 
called sizars — servitors at Oxford — (a very pretty and gentle- 
manlike title). A distinction is made in their clothes because 
they are poor ; for which reason they wear a badge of poverty, 
and are not allowed to take their meals with their fellow-stu- 
dents. 

When this wicked and shameful distinction was set up, it 
was of a piece with all the rest — a part of the brutal, unchristian, 
blundering feudal system. r3istinctions of rank were then so 
strongly insisted upon, that it would have been thought blas- 
phemy <0 doubt them, as blasphemous as it is in parts of the 
United States now for a nigger to set up as the equal of a white 
man. A ruffian like Henry VIII. talked as gravely about the 
divine powers vested in him, as if he had been an inspired 
prophet. A wretch like James I. not only believed that there 
was in himself a particular sanctity, but other people believed 
him. Government regulated the length of a merchant’s shoes 
as well as meddled with his trade, prices, exports, machinery. 
It thought itself fustified in roasting a man for his religion, or 
pulling a Jew’s teeth out if he did not pay a contribution, or 
ordered him to dress in a yellow gabardine, and locked him in 
. a particular quarter. 

Now a merchant may wear what boots he pleases, and has 
pretty nearly acquired the privilege of buying and selling with- 
out the Government laying its paws upon the bargain. The 
stake for heretics is gone ; the pillory is taken down ; Bishops 
are even found lifting up their voices against the remains of 
persecution, and ready to do away with the last Catholic Dis- 
abilities. Sir Robert Peel, though he wished it ever so much, 
has no power over Mr. Benjamin Disraeli’s grinders, or any 
means of violently handling that gentleman’s jaw. Jews are 


ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS. 


S3 

not called upoh to wear badges : on the contrary, they may live 
in Piccadilly, or the Minories, according to fancy ; they may 
dress like Christians, and do sometimes in a most elegant and 
fashionable manner. 

Why is the poor College servitor to wear that name and 
that badge still ? Because Universities are the last places into 
which Reform penetrates. But now that she can go to College 
and back for five shillings, let her travel down thither. 


CHAPTER XTV. 

ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS. 

All the men of Saint Boniface will recognize Hugby and 
Crump in these two pictures. They were tutors in our time, 
and Crump is since advanced to be President of the College. 
He was formerly, and is now, a rich specimen of a University 
Snob. 

At five*andTwenty, Crump invented three new metres, and 
published an edition of an exceedingly improper Greek Comedy, 
with no less than twenty emendations upon the German text of 
Schnupfenius and Schnapsius. These services to religion in- 
stantly pointed him out for advancement in the Church, and he 
is now President of Saint Boniface, and very narrowly escaped 
the Bench. 

Crump thinks Saint Boniface the centre of the world, and his 
position as President the highest in England. He expects the 
fellows and tutors to pay him the same sort of service that Car- 
dinals pay to the Pope. I am sure Crawler would have no ob- 
jection to carry his trencher, or Page to hold up the skirts of 
his gown as he stalks into chapel. He roars out the responses 
there as if it were an honor to heaven that the President of 
Saint Boniface should take a part in the service, and in his own 
lodge and college acknowledges the Sovereign only as his 
superior. 

When the allied monarchs came down, and were made Doc- 
tors of the University, a breakfast was given at Saint Boniface; 
on which occasion Crump allowed the Emperor Alexander to 
walk before him, but took the pas himself of the King ot Prus- 
sia and Prince Blucher. He was going to put the Hetman 


54 


THE BOOK OE SNOBS. 


Platoff to breakfast at a side-table with the under college tutors ; 
but he was induced to relent, and merely entertained that dis- 
tinguished Cossack with a discourse on his own language, in 
which he showed that the Hetman knew nothing about it. 

As for us undergraduates, we scarcely knew more about 
Crump than about the Grand Llama. A few favored youths 
are asked occasionally to tea at the lodge ; but they do not 
speak unless first addressed by the Doctor ; and if they ven- 
ture to sit down. Crump’s follower, Mr. Toady, whispers, 
“ Gentlemen, will you have the kindness to get up ? — The Pres- 
ident is passing ; ” or ‘‘ Gentlemen, the President prefers that 
undergraduates should not sit down ; ” or words to a similar 
effect. 

To do Crump justice, he does not cringe now to great peo- 
ple. He rather patronizes them than otherwise ; and, in 
London, speaks quite affably to a Duke who has been brought 
up at his college, or holds out a finger to a Marquis. He does 
not disguise his own origin, but brags of it with considerable 
self-gratulation I was a Charity-boy,” says he ; ‘‘ see what 
I am now ; the greatest Greek scholar of the greatest Col- 
lege of the greatest University of the greatest Empire in the 
world.” The argument being, that this is a capital world for 
beggars, because he, being a beggar, has managed to get on 
horseback. 

Hugby owes his eminence to patient merit and agreeable 
perseverance. He is a meek, mild, inoffensive creature, with 
just enough of scholarship to fit him to hold a lecture, or set an 
examination paper. He rose by kindness to the aristocracy. 
It was wonderful to see the way in which that poor creature 
grovelled before a nobleman or a lord’s nephew, or even some 
noisy and disreputable commpner, the friend of a lord. He 
used to give the young noblemen the most painful and elaborate 
breakfasts, and adopt a jaunty genteel air, and talk with them 
(although he was decidedly serious) about the opera, or the last 
run with the hounds. It was good to watch him in the midst 
of a circle of young tufts, with his mean, smiling, eager, uneasy 
familiarity. He used to write home confidential letters to their 
parents, and made it his duty to call upon them when in town, 
to condole or rejoice with them when a death, birth, or marriage 
took place in their family ; and to feast them whenever they 
came to the University. I recollect a letter lying on a desk in 
his lecture-room for a whole term, beginning, My Lord 
Duke.” It was to show us that he corresponded with such 
dignities. 


ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS. 


55 


When the late lamented Lord Glenlivat, who broke his neck 
at a hurdle-race, at the premature age of twenty-four, was at the 
University, the amiable young fellow, passing to his rooms in 
the early morning, and seeing Hugby’s boots at his door, on 
the same staircase, playfully wadded the insides of the boots 
with cobbler’s wax, which caused excruciating pains to the 
Rev. Mr. Hugby, when he came to take them off the same 
evening, before dining with the master of St. Crispin’s. 

Everybody gave the credit of this admirable piece of fun to 
Lord Glenlivat’s friend. Bob Tizzy, who was famous for such 
feats, and who had already made away with the college pump- 
handle ; filed St. Boniface’s nose smooth with his face ; carried 
off four images of nigger-boys from the tobacconists ; painted 
the senior proctor’s horse pea-green, &c., &c. ; and Bob (who 
was of the party certainly, and would not peach,) was just on 
the point of incurring expulsion, and so losing the family living 
which was in store for him, when Glenlivat nobly stepped for- 
ward, owned himself to be the author of the delightful jeu- 
esprit^ apologized to the tutor, and accepted the rustication. 

Hugby cried when Glenlivat apologized ; if the young noble- 
man had kicked him round the court, I believe the tutor would 
have been happy, so that an apology and a reconciliation might 
subsequently ensue. My lord,” said he, ‘‘in your conduct on 
this and all other occasions, you have acted as becomes a 
gentleman ; you have been an honor to the University, as you 
will be to the peerage, I am sure, when the amiable vivacity of 
youth is calmed down, and you are called upon to take your 
proper share in the government of the nation.” And when his 
lordship took leave of the University, Hugby presented him 
with a copy of his “ Sermons to a Nobleman s Family ” (Hugby 
was once private tutor to the sons of the Earl of Muffborough), 
which Glenlivat presented in return to Mr. William Ramm, 
known to the fancy as the Tutbury Pet, and the sermons now 
figure on the boudoir-table of Mrs. Ramm, behind the bar of 
her house of , entertainment, “ The Game Cock and Spurs,” 
near Woodstock, Oxon. 

At the beginning of the long vacation, Hugby comes to 
town, and puts up in handsome lodgings near St. James’s 
Square ; rides in the Park in the afternoon ; and is delighted to 
read his name in the morning papers among the list of persons 
present at Muffborough House, and the Marquis of Farintosh’s 
evening parties. He is a membei; of Sydney Scraper’s Club 
where, however, he drinks his pint of claret. 

Sometimes you may see him on Sundays, at the hour when 


56 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


tavern doors open, whence issue little girls with great Jugs of 
porter ; when charity-boys walk the streets, bearing brown 
dishes of smoking shoulders of mutton and baked ’taturs ; 
when Sheeny and Moses are seen smoking their pipes before 
their lazy shutters in Seven Dials ; when a crowd of smiling 
persons in clean outlandish dresses, in monstrous bonnets and 
flaring printed gowns, or in crumpled glossy coats and silks 
that bear the creases of the drawers where they have lain all 
the week, file down High Street, — sometimes, I say, you may 
see Hugby coming out of the Church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, 
with a stout gentlewoman leaning on his arm, whose old face 
bears an expression of supreme pride and happiness as she 
glances round at all her neighbors, and who faces the curate 
himself, and marches into Holborn, where she pulls the bell of 
a house over which is inscribed, ‘‘ Hugby, Haberdasher.” It 
is the mother of the Rev. F. Hugby, as proud of her son in his 
white choker as Cornelia of her jewels at Rome. That is old 
Hugby bringing up the rear with the Prayer-books, and Betsy 
Hugby the old maid, his daughter, — old Hugby, Haberdasher 
and Churchwarden. 

In the front room up stairs, where the dinner is laid out, 
there is a picture of Muffborough Castle ; of the Earl of Mufl- 
borough, K. X., Lord-Lieutenant for Diddlesex ; an engraving, 
from an almanac, of Saint Boniface College, Oxon ; and a stick- 
ing-plaster portrait of Hugby when young, in a cap and gown. 
A copy of his “ Sermons to a Nobleman’s Family” is on the 
book-shelf, by the Whole Duty of Man,” the Reports of the 
Missionary Societies, and the ‘‘ Oxford University Calendar.” 
Old Hugby knows part of this by heart : every living belonging 
to Saint Boniface, and the name of every tutor, fellow, noble- 
man, and undergraduate. 

He used to go to meeting and preach himself, until his son 
took orders ; but of late the old gentleman has been accused of 
Puseyism, and is quite j^itiless against the Dissenters. 


CHAPTER XV. 

ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS. 

I SHOULD like to fill several volumes with accounts of 
various University Snobs ; so fond are my reminiscences of 
them, and so numerous arq they. I should like to speak, above 


ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS, 


57 


all, of the wives and daughters of some of the Professor-Snobs ; 
their amusements, habits, jealousies ; their innocent artifices to 
entrap young men ; their pic-nics, concerts, and evening-parties. 
I wonder what has become of Emily Blades, daughter of Blades, 
the Professor of the Mandingo language ? I remember her 
shoulders to this day, as she sat in the midst of a crowd of 
about seventy young gentlemen, from Corpus and Catherine 
Hall, entertaining them with ogles and French songs on the 
guitar. Are you married, fair Emily of the shoulders ? What 
beautiful ringlets those were that used to dribble over them ! — 
what a waist ! — what a killing sea-green shot-silk gown ! — what 
a cameo, the size of a muffin! There were thirty-six young 
men of the University in love at one time with Emily Blades : 
and no words are sufficient to describe the pity, the sorrow, the 
deep, deep commiseration — the rage, fury, and uncharitableness, 
in other words — with which the Miss' Trumps (daughter of 
Trumps, the Professor of Phlebotomy) regarded her, because 
she didii^t squint, and because she wasn't marked with the 
small-pox. 

As for the young University Snobs, I am getting too old, now, 
to speak of such very familiarly. My recollections of them lie 
in the far, far past — almost as far back as Pelham’s time. 

We the?i used to consider Snobs raw-looking lads, who never 
missed chapel ; who wore highlows and no straps ; who walked 
two hours on the Trumpington road every day of their lives ; 
who carried off the college scholarships, and who overrated 
themselves in hall. We were premature in pronouncing our 
verdict of youthful Snobbishness. The man without straps 
fulfilled his destiny and duty. He eased his old governor, the 
curate in Westmoreland, or helped his sisters to set up the 
Ladies’ School. He wrote a ‘‘Dictionary,” or a “Treatise on 
Conic Sections,” as his nature and genius prompted. He got 
a fellowship : and then took to himself a wife, and a living. He 
presides over a parish now, and thinks it rather a dashing thing 
to belong to the “ Oxford and Cambridge Club ; ” and his pa- 
rishioners love him, and snore under his sermons. No, no, he 
is not a Snob. It i"' not straps that make the gentleman, or 
highlows that unn: ike him, be they ever so thick. My son, it 
is you who are the Snob if you lightly despise a man for doing 
his duty, and refuse to shake an honest man’s hand because it 
wears a Berlin glove. 

We then used to consider it not the least vulgar for a par- 
cel of lads who had been whipped three months previous, and 
Vvere not allowed more than three glasses of port at home, to 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


58 

sit down to pine-apples and ices at each others rooms, and 
fuddle themselves with champagne and claret. 

One looks back to what was called “ a wine-party with a 
sort of wonder. Thirty lads round a table covered with bad 
sweetmeats, drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing bad 
songs over and over again. Milk-punch — smoking — ^ghastly 
headache — frightful spectacle of dessert-table next morning, and 
smell of tobacco — your guardian, the clergyman, dropping in, 
in the midst of this — expecting to find you deep in Algebra, and 
discovering the Gyp administering soda-water. 

There were young men who despised the lads who indulged 
in the coarse hospitalities of wine-parties, who prided them- 
selves in giving recherche little French dinners. Both wine- 
party-givers and dinner-givers were Snobs. 

There were what used to be called ‘‘dressy Snobs” — Jimmy, 
who might be seen at five o’clock elaborately rigged out, with a 
camellia in his button-hole, glazed boots, and fresh kid-gloves 
twice a day; — Jessamy, who was conspicuous for his “jewelry,” 
— a young donkey, glittering all over with chains, rings, and 
shirt-studs ; — Jacky, who rode every day solemnly on the Blen- 
heim Road, in pumps and white silk stockings, with his hair 
curled, — all three of whom flattered themselves they gave laws 
to the University about dress — all three most odious varieties 
of Snobs. 

Sporting Snobs of course there were, and are always — those 
happy beings in whom Nature has implanted a love of slang : 
who loitered about the horsekeeper’s stables, and drove the 
London coaches — a stage in and out — and might be seen swag- 
gering through the courts in iDink of early mornings, and in- 
dulged in dice and blind-hookey at nights, and never missed a 
race or a boxing-match ; and rode fiat-races, and kept bull- 
terriers. Worse Snobs even than these were poor miserable 
wretches who did not like hunting at all, and could not afford 
it, and were in mortal fear at a two-foot ditch ; but who hunted 
because Glenlivat and Cinqbars hunted. The Billiard Snob 
and the Boating Snob were varieties of these, and are to be 
found elsewhere than in Universities. 

Then there were Philosophical Snobs, who used to ape 
statesmen at the spouting-clubs, and who believed as a fact 
that Government always had an eye on the University for the 
selection of orators for the Blouse of Commons. There were 
audacious young free-thinkers, who adored nobody or nothing, 
except perhaps Robespierre and the Koran, and panted for the 
day when the pale name of priest should shrink and dwindle 
away before the indignation of an enlightened worlds 


ON’ LITER AR V SNOBR. 


59 


But the worst of all University Snobs are those unfortunates 
who go to rack and ruin from their desire to ape their betters. 
Smith becomes acquainted with great people at college, and is 
ashamed of his father the tradesman. Jones has fine acquaint- 
ances, and lives after their fashion like a gay free-hearted 
fellow as he is, and ruins his father, and robs his sister’s por- 
tion, and cripples his younger brother’s outset in life, for the 
pleasure of entertaining my lord, and riding by the side of Sir 
John. And though it may be very good fun for Robinson to 
fuddle himself at home as he does at College, and to be brought 
home by the policeman he has just been trying to knock down 
— think what fun it is for the poor old soul his mother ! — the 
half-pay captain’s widow, who has been pinching herself all her 
life long, in order that that jolly young fellow might have a 
University education. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

ON LITERARY SNOBS. 

What will he say about Literary Snobs ? has been a ques- 
tion, I make no doubt, often asked by the public. How can 
he let off his own profession ? Will that truculent and unspar- 
ing monster who attacks the nobility, the clergy, the army, and 
the ladies, indiscriminately, hesitate when the turn comes to 
egorger his own flesh and blood ? 

My dear and excellent querist, whom does the schoolmaster 
flog so resolutely as his own son ? Didn’t Brutus chop his 
offspring’s head off You have a very bad opinion indeed of 
the present state of literature and of literary men, if you fancy 
that any one of us would hesitate to stick a knife into his 
neighbor penman, if the latter’s death could do the State any 
service. 

But the fact is, that in the literary profession there are 
NO Snobs. Look round at the whole body of British men of 
letters, and I defy you to point out among them a single 
instance of vulgarity, or envy, or assumption. 

Men and women, as far as I have known them, they are all 
modest in their demeanor, elegant in their manners, spotless 
in their lives, and honorable in their conduct to the world and 


6o 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


to each other. You 7nay, occasionally, it is true, hear one 
literary man abusing his brother; but why? Not in the least 
out of mahce ; not at all from envy ; merely from a sense of 
truth and public duty. Suppose, for instance, I good-naturedly 
point out a blemish in my friend Mr. FuncKs person, and say, 
Mr. F. has a hump-back, and his nose and chin are more 
crooked than those features in the Apollo or Antinous, which 
we are accustomed to consider as our standards of beauty; 
does this argue malice on my part towards Mr. Funch ? Not 
in the least. It is the critic’s duty to point out defects as well 
as merits, and he invariably does his duty with the utmost 
gentleness and candor. 

An intelligent foreigner’s testimony about our manners is 
always worth having, and I think, in this respect, the work of 
an eminent American, Mr. N. P. Willis, is eminently valuable 
and impartial. In his “ Histor}^ of Ernest Clay,” a crack mag- 
azine-writer, the reader will get an exact account of the life of 
a popular man of letters in England. He is always the great 
lion of society. 

He takes the pas of dukes and earls ; all the nobility crowd 
to see him : I forget how many baronesses and duchesses fall 
in love with him. But on this subject let us hold our tongues. 
Modesty forbids that we should reveal the names of the heart- 
broken countesses and dear marchionesses who are pining for 
every one of the contributors in Funch. 

If anybody wants to know how intimately authors are con- 
nected with the fashionable world, they have but to read the 
genteel novels. What refinement and delicacy pervades the 
works of Mrs. Barnaby ! What delightful good company do 
you meet with in Mrs. Armytage ! She seldom introduces you 
to anybody under a marquis ! I don’t know anything more 
delicious than the pictures of genteel life in “ Ten Thousand a 
Year,” except perhaps the ‘‘Young Duke,” and “ Coningsby.’^ 
There’s a modest grace about them., and an air of easy high 
fashion, which only belongs to blood, my dear Sir — to true 
blood. 

And what linguists many of our writers are ! Lady Bulwer, 
Lady Londonderry, Sir Edward himself — they write the French 
language with a luxurious elegance and ease which sets them 
far above their continental rivals, of whom not one (except 
Paul de Kock) knows a word of English. 

And what Briton can read without enjoyment the works of 
James, so admirable for terseness ; and the playful humor and 
dazzling off-hand lightness of Ainsworth ? Among other hu- 


ON LITERARY SNOBS. 


6i 


morists, one might glance at a Jerrold, the chivalrous advocate 
of Toryism and Church and State ; an k Beckett, with a light- 
some pen, but a savage earnestness of purpose ; a Jeames, 
whose pure style, and wit unmingled with buffoonery, was 
relished by a congenial public. 

Speaking of critics, perhaps there never was a review that 
has done to much for literature as the admirable Quarterly. 
It has its prejudices, to be sure, as which of us have not 1 It 
goes out of its way to abuse a great man, or lays mercilessly 
on to such pretenders as Keats and Tennyson ; but, on the 
other hand, it is the friend of all young authors, and has marked 
and .nurtured all the rising talent of the country. It is loved 
by everybody. There, again, is Blackwood^ s Magazine — con- 
spicuous for modest elegance and amiable astire ; that reviev/ 
never passes the bounds of politeness in a joke. It is the arbi- 
ter of manners ; and, while gently exposing the foibles of Lon- 
doners (for whom the beaux esprits of Edinburgh entertain a 
justifiable contempt), it is never coarse in its fun. The fiery 
enthusiasm of the Athenceum is well known : and the bitter wit 
of the too difficult Literary Gazette. The Exammer is perhaps 
too timid, and the Spectator too boisterous in its praise — but 
who can carp at these minor faults ? No, no ; the critics of 
England and the authors of England are unrivalled as a body ; 
and hence it becomes impossible for us to find fault with them. 

Above all, I never knew a man of letters ashamed of his pro- 
fessiofi. Those who know us, know what an affectionate and 
brotherly spirit there is among us all. Sometimes one of us 
rises in the world : we never attack him or sneer at him under 
those circumstances, but rejoice to a man at his success. If 
Jones dines with a lord. Smith never says Jones is a courtier 
a!nd cringer. Nor, on the other hand, does Jones, who is in 
the habit of frequenting the society of great people, give him- 
self any airs on account of the company he keeps ; but will 
leave a duke’s arm in Pall Mall t6 come over and speak to poor 
Brown, the young penny-a-liner. 

That sense of equality and fraternity amongst authors has 
always struck me as one of the most amiable characteristics of 
the class. It is because we know and respect each other, that 
the world respects us so much ; that we hold such a good posi- 
tion in society, and demean ourselves so irreproachably when 
there. 

Literary persons are held in such esteem by the nation, that 
about two of them have been absolutely invited to court during 
the present reign ; and it is probable that towards the end of 


62 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


the season, one or two will be asked to dinner by Sir Robert 
Peel. 

They are such favorites with the public, that they are con- 
tinually obliged to have their pictures taken and published ; 
and one or two could be pointed out, of whom the nation in- 
sists upon having a fresh portrait every year. Nothing can be 
more gratifying than this proof of the affectionate regard which 
the people has for its instructors. 

Literature is held in such honor in England, that there is a 
sum of near twelve hundred pounds per annum set apart to 
pension deserving persons following that profession. And a 
great compliment this is, too, to the professors, and a proof of 
their generally prosperous and flourishing condition. They are 
generally so rich and thrifty, that scarcely any money is wanted 
to help them. 

If every word of this is true, how. I should like to know, am 
I to write about Literary Snobs. 


CHAPTER XVIL 

A LITTLE ABOUT IRISH SNOBS. 

You do not, to be sure, imagine that there are no other 
Snobs in Ireland than those of the amiable party who wish to 
make pikes of iron railroads (it^s a fine Irish economy), and to 
cut the throats of the Saxon invaders. These are the venom- 
ous sort ; and had they been invented in his time, St. Patrick 
would have banished them out of the kingdom along with the 
other dangerous reptiles. 

I think it is the Four Masters, or else it’s Olaus Magnus, or 
else it’s certainly O’Neill Daunt, in the Catechism of Irish 
Histor}',” who relates that when Richard the Second came to 
Ireland, and the Irish chiefs did homage to him, going down 
on their knees — the poor simple creatures ! — and worshipping 
and wondering before the English king and the dandies of his 
court, my lords the English noblemen mocked and jeered at 
their uncouth Irish admirers, mimicked their talk and gestures, 
pulled their poor old beards, and laughed at the strange fashion 
of their garments. 


A LITTLE ABOUT IRISH SNOBS. 63 

The English Snob rampant always does this to the present 
da}/’. There is no Snob in existence, perhaps, that has such an 
indomitable belief in himself : that sneers you down all the rest 
of the world besides, and has such an insufferable, admirable, 
stupid contempt for all people but his own — nay, 'for all sets 
but his own. Gwacious Gad ! what stories about “ the 
Iwish’^ these young dandies accompanying King Richard must 
have had to tell, when they returned to Pall Mall, and smoked 
their cigars upon the steps of White’s ! ” 

The Irish snobbishness developes itself not in pride so much 
as in servility and mean admirations, and trumpery imitations 
of their neighbors. And I wonder De Tocqueville and De 
Beaumont, and The Times' Commissioner, did not explain the 
Snobbishness of Ireland as contrasted with our own. Ours is 
that of Richard’s Norman Knights, — haughty, brutal, stupid, 
and perfectly • self-confident ; theirs, of the poor, wondering, 
kneeling, simple chieftains. They are on their knees still be- 
fore English fashion — these simple, wild people ; and indeed it 
is hard not to grin at some of their naive exhibitions. 

Some years since, when a certain great orator was Lord 
Mayor of Dublin, he used to wear a red gown and a cocked 
hat, the splendor of which delighted him as much as a new cur- 
tain-ring in her nose or a string of glass-beads round her neck 
charms Queen Quasheeneaboo. He used to pay visits to peo- 
ple in this dress ; to appear at meetings hundreds of miles off, 
in the red velvet gown. And to hear the people crying “ Yes, 
me Lard ! ” and No, me Lard ! ” and to read the prodigious 
accounts of his Lordship in the papers : it seemed as if the 
people and he liked to be taken in by this twopenny splendor. 
Twopenny magnificence, indeed, exists all over Ireland, and may 
be considered as the great characteristic of the Snobbishness 
of that countr}^ 

When Mrs. Mulholligan, the grocer’s lady, retires to Kings- 
town, she has Mulholliganville ” painted over the gate of her 
villa ; and receives you at a door that won’t shut, or gazes at 
you out of a window that is glazed with an old petticoat. 

Be it ever so shabby and dismal, nobody ever owns to keep- 
ing a shop. A fellow whose stock-in-trade is a penny roll or a 
tumbler of lollipops, calls his cabin the ‘‘American Flour 
Stores,” or the “ Depository for Colonial Produce,” or some 
such name. 

As for Inns, there are none in the country ; Hotels abound, 
as well furnished as Mulholliganville ; but again there are no 
such people as laudlords and landladies ; the landlord is out 


THE BOOH OF SHOBS. 


64 

with the hounds, and my lady in the parlor talking with the 
Captain or playing the piano. 

If a gentleman has a hundred a year to leave to his family 
they all become gentlemen, all keep a nag, ride to hounds, and 
swagger about in the Phaynix,” and grow tufts to their chins 
like so many real aristocrats. 

A friend of mine has taken to be a painter, and lives out of 
Ireland, where he is considered to have disgraced the family by 
choosing such a profession. His father is a wine merchant ; 
and his elder brother an apothecary. 

The number of men one meets in London and on the Con- 
tinent who have a pretty little property of five-and-twenty hun- 
dred a year in Ireland is prodigious : those who will have nine 
thousand a year in land when sofnebody dies are still more 
numerous. I myself have met as many descendants from Irish 
kings as would form a brigade. 

And who has not met the Irishman who apes the English- 
man, and who forgets his country and tries to forget his accent, 
or to smother the taste of it, as it were ? ‘‘ Come, dine with 

me, my boy,’’ says O’ Dowd, of O’Dowdstown : “ you’ll find us 
all English there ; ” which he tells you with a brogue as broad 
as from here to Kingstown Pier. And did you never hear Mrs. 
Captain Macmanus talk about I-ah-land,” and her account of 
her ‘‘ fawther’s esteet ? ” Very few men have rubbed through 
the world without hearing and witnessing some of these Hiber- 
nian phenomena — these twopenny splendors. 

And what say you to the summit of society — the Castle— 
with a sham king, and sham lords-in-waiting, and sham loyalty, 
and a sham Haroun Alraschid, to go about in a sham disguise, 
making believe to be affable and splendid ? That Castle is 
the pink and pride of Snobbishness. A Court Circular is bad 
enough, with two columns of print about a little baby that’s 
christened — but think of people liking a sham Court Circular I 

I think the shams of Ireland are more outrageous than those 
of any country. A fellow shows you a hill and says, ‘‘That’s 
the highest mountain in all Ireland ; ” or a gentleman tells you 
he is descended from Brian Boroo, and has his five-and-thirty 
hundred a year ; or Mrs. Macmanus describes her fawther’s 
esteet ; or ould Dan rises and says the Irish women are the 
loveliest, the Irish men the bravest, the Irish land the most 
fertile in the world : and nobody believes anybody — the latter 
doesn’t believe his story nor the hearer : — but they make- 
believe to believe, and solemnly do honor to humbug. 

O Ireland ! O my country ! (for I make little doubt that I 


party-giVMg snobs. 


% 

am descended from Brian Boroo too) when will you acknowledge 
that two and two make four, and call a pikestalf a pikestaff? — 
that is the very best use you can make of the latter. Irish 
snobs will dwindle away then, and we shall never hear tell of 
Hereditary Bondsmen. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

PARTY-GIVING SNOBS. 

Our selection of Snobs has lately been too exclusively of a 
political character. “Give us private Snobs,’’ cry the dear 
ladies. (I have before me the letter of one fair correspondent 
of the fishing village of Brighthelmstone in Sussex, and could 
her commands ever be disobeyed ?) “ Tell us more, dear Mr. 

Snob, about your experience of Snobs in society.” Heaven 
bless the dear souls ! — they are accustomed to the word now — 
the odious, vulgar, horrid, unpronounceable word slips out of 
their lips with the prettiest glibness possible. I should not 
wonder if it were used at Court amongst the Maids of Honor. 
In the very best society I know it is. And why not ? Snobbish- 
ness is vulgar — the mere words are not : that which we call a 
Snob, by any other name would still be Snobbish. 

Well, then. As the season is drawing to a close : as many 
hundreds of kind souls, snobbish or otherwise, have quitted 
London ; as many hospitable carpets are taken up ; and win- 
dow-blinds are pitilessly papered with the Morfiiiig Herald , 
and mansions once inhabited by cheerful owners are now con- 
signed to the care of the housekeeper’s dreary loctifii tenens — • 
some moi ’dy old woman, who, in reply to the hopeless clang- 
ing of the bell, peers at you for a moment from the area, and 
then slowly unbolting the great hall-door, informs you my lady 
has left town, or that “the family’s in the country,” or “gone 
up the Rind,” — or what not ; as the season and parties are 
over ; why not consider Party-giving Snobs for a while, and 
review the conduct of some of those individuals who have quit- 
ted the town for six months ? 

Some of those worthy Snobs are making believe to go 
yachting, and, dressed in telescopes and pea-jackets, are pass- 
ing their time between Cherbourg and Cowes ; some living 
higgledy-piggledy in dismal little huts in Scotland, provisioned 

S 


66 


TffE BOC\ OF SA^OnS. 

with canisters of portable soup, and fricandeaux hermetically 
sealed in tin, are passing their days slaughtering grouse on the 
moors ; some are dozing and bathing away the effects of the 
season at Kissengen, or watching the ingenious game of Trente- 
ct-quara7ite at Homburg and Ems. We can afford to be very 
bitter upon them now they are all gone. Now there are no 
more parties, let us have at the . Party-giving Snobs. The din- 
ner-giving, the ball-giving, the dejeiiner-givmg, the conversazione- 
giving Snobs — Lord ! Lord ! what havoc might have been 
made amongst them had we attacked them during the plethora 
of the season ! I should have been obliged to have a guard to 
defend me from tiddlers and pastry-cooks, indignant at the 
abuse of their patrons. Already I’m told that, from some flip- 
pant and unguarded expressions considered derogatory to Baker 
Street and Harley Street, rents have fallen in these respectable 
quarters ; and orders have been issued that at least Mr. Snob 
shall be asked to parties there no more. Well, then — now 
they are all away, let us frisk at our ease, and have at every- 
thing, like the bull in the china-shop. They mayn’t hear of 
what is going on in their absence, and, if they do, they can’t 
bear malice for six months. We will begin to make it up with 
them about next February, and let next year take care of itself. 
We shall have no more dinners from the dinner-giving Snobs : 
no more balls from the ball-givers : no more conversaziofies 
(U^ank Mussy ! as Jeames says,) from the Conversazione Snob : 
and what is to prevent us from telling the truth ? 

The snobbishness of Conversazione Snobs is very soon dis- 
posed of : as soon as that cup of washy bohea that is handed 
to you in the tea-room ; or the muddy remnant of ice that you 
grasp in the suffocating scuffle of the assembly up stairs. 

Good heavens ! What do people mean by going there ? 
What is done there, that everybody throngs into those three 
little rooms Was the Black Hole considered to be an agree- 
able ramiofi^ that Britons in the dog-days here seek to imitate 
it ? After being rammed to a jelly in a door-way (where you 
feel your feet going through Lady Barbara Macbeth’s lace 
flounces, and get a look from that haggard and painted old 
harpy, compared to which the gaze of Ugolino is quite cheer- 
ful) ; after withdrawing your elbow out of poor gasping Bob Gut- 
tleton’s white waistcoat, from which cushion it was impossible to 
remove it, though you knew you were squeezing poor Bob into 
an apoplexy — you find yourself at last in the reception-room, 
and try to catch the eye of Mrs. Botibol, the conversazione-giwer. 
When you catch her eye, you are expected to grin, and she 


rARTV-GTVTN’G GALOPS, 


67 


smiles too, for the four hundredth time that night ; and, if she’s 
very glad to see you, waggles her little hand before her face as 
if to blow you a kiss, as the phrase is. 

Why the deuce should Mrs. Botibol blow me a kiss ? 1 

wouldn’t kiss her for the world. Why do I grin when I see 
her, as if I was delighted ? Am I I don’t care a straw for 
Mrs. Botibol. I know what she thinks about me. I know 
what she said about my last volume of poems (I had it from a 
dear mutual friend). Why, I say in a w^ord, are we going on 
ogling and telegraphing each other in this insane way ? — 
Because we are both performing the ceremonies demanded by 
the Great Snob Society ; whose dictates we all of us obey. 

Well ; the recognition is over — my jaws have returned to 
their usual English expression of subdued agony and intense 
gloom, and the Botibol is grinning and kissing her fingers to 
somebody else, who is squeezing through the aperture by 
which we have just entered. It is Lady Ann Clutterbuck, who 
has her Friday evenings, as Botibol (Botty, we call her), has 
her Wednesdays. That is Miss Clementina Clutterbuck, the 
cadaverous young woman in green, with florid auburn hair, 
who has just published her volume of poems The Death- 
Shriek;’^ ^‘Damien;” “The Faggot of Joan of Arc;” and 
“Translations from the German” — of course). The conver- 
sazione-women salute each other, calling each other “ My dear 
Lady Ann ” and “ My dear good Eliza,” and hating each 
other, as women hate who give parties on Wednesdays and 
Fridays. With inexpressible pain dear good Eliza sees Ann 
go up and coax and wheedle Abou Gosh, who has just arrived 
from Syria, and beg him to patronize her Fridays. 

All this while, amidst the crowd and the scuffle, and a per- 
petual buzz and chatter, and the flare of the wax-candles, and 
an intolerable smell of musk — what the poor Snobs who write 
fashionable romances call “the gleam of gems, the odor of 
perfumes, the blaze of countless lamps ” — a scrubby-looking, 
yellow-faced foreigner, with cleaned gloves, is warbling inau- 
dibly in a corner, to the accompaniment of another. “ The 
Great Cacafogo,” Mrs. Botibol whispers, as she passes you by. 
“ A great creature, Thumpenstrumpff, is at the instrument — - 
the Hetman Platoff’s pianist, you know.” 

To hear this Cacafogo and Thumpenstrumpff, a hundred 
people are gathered together — a bevy of dowagers, stout or 
scraggy ; a faint sprinkling of misses ; six moody-looking lords, 
perfectly meek and solemn ; wonderful foreign Counts, with 
bushy whiskers and yellow faces, and a great deal of dubious 


68 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


jewelry; young dandies with slim waists and open necks, and 
self-satisfied simpers, and flowers in their buttons ; the old, 
stiff, stout, bald-headed conve?'sazio?ic roues., whom you meet 
everywhere — who never miss a night of this delicious enjoy- 
ment ; the three last-caught lions of the season — Higgs, the 
traveller, Biggs, the novelist, and Toffey, who has come out so 
on the sugar question ; Captain Flash, who is invited on account 
of his pretty wife ; and Lord Ogleby, who goes wherever she 
goes. Que s^ais-je ? Who are the owners of all those show^ 
scarfs and white neck-cloths? — Ask little Tom Prig, who is 
there in all his glory, knows everybody, has a story about every 
one; and, as he trips home to his lodgings in Jermyn Street, 
with his gibus-hat ai d his little glazed pumps, thinks he is the 
fashionablest young fellow in town, and that he really has 
passed a night of exquisite enjoyment. 

You go up (with your usual easy elegance of manner) and 
talk to Miss Smith in a corner. ‘‘ Oh, Mr. Snob, I’m afraid 
you’re sadly satirical.” 

That’s all she says. If you say it’s fine weather, she bursts 
out laughing ; or hint that it’s very hot, she vow^s you are the 
drollest wretch ! Meanwhile Mrs. Botibol is simpering on fresh 
arrivals ; the individual at the door is roaring out their names • 
poor Cacafogo is quavering away in the music-room, under the 
impression that he will be lanee in the world by singing inaudi- 
bly here. And what a blessing it is to squeeze out of the door, 
and into the street, where a half-hundred of carriages are in 
waiting ; and where the link-boy, with that unnecessary lantern 
of his, pounces upon all who issue out, and will insist upon get- 
ting your noble honor’s lordship’s cab. 

And to think that there are people who, after having been 
to Botibol on Wednesday, will go to Clutterbuck on Friday ! 


CHAPTER XIX. 

DINING-OUT SNOBS. 

In England Dinner-giving Snobs occupy a very important 
place in society, and the task of describing them is tremendous. 
There was a time in my life when the consciousness of having 


DINING-OUT SNOBS. 


69 

eaten a man’s salt rendered me dumb regarding his demerits, 
and I thought it a wicked act and a breach of hospitality to 
speak ill of him. 

But why should a saddle of mutton blind you, or a turbot 
and lobster-sauce shut your mouth forever ? With advancing 
age, men see their duties more clearly. I am not to be hood- 
winked any longer by a slice of venison, be it ever so fat ; and 
as for being dumb on account of turbot and lobster-sauce — of 
course I am ; good manners ordain that I should be so, until I 
have swallowed the compound — but not afterwards ; directly 
the victuals are discussed, and John takes away the plate, my 
tongue begins to wag. Does not yours, if you have a pleasant 
neighbor ? — a lovely creature, say, of some five-and-thirty, 
whose daughters have not yet quite come out — they are the 
best talkers. As for your young misses, they are only put about 
the table to look at — like the flowers in the centre-piece. Their 
blushing youth and natural modesty preclude them from that 
easy, confidential, conversational abandon which forms the de- 
light of the intercourse with their dear mothers. It is to these, 
if he would prosper in his profession, that the Dining-out Snob 
should address himself. Suppose you sit next to one of these, 
how pleasant it is, in the intervals of the banquet, actually to 
abuse the victuals and the giver of the entertainment ! It’s 
twice as piquant to make fun of a man under his very nose. 

^‘What A a Dinner-giving Snob?” some innocent youth, 
who is not repaiidu in the world, may ask — or some simple 
reader who has not the benefits of London experience. 

My dear sir, I will show you — not all, for that is impossible 
— but several kinds of Dinner-giving Snobs. For instance, 
suppose you, in the middle rank of life, accustomed to Mutton, 
roast on Tuesday, cold on Wednesday, hashed on Thursday, 
&c., with small means and a small establishment, choose to 
waste the former and set the latter topsy-turvey by giving en- 
tertainments unnaturally costly — you come into the Dinner- 
giving Snob class at once. Suppose you get in cheap made 
dishes from the pastry-cook’s, and hire a couple of green grocers, 
or carpet-beaters, to figure as footmen, dismissing honest Molly, 
who waits on common days, and bedizening your table (or- 
dinarily ornamented with willow-pattern crockery) with two- 
penny-halfpenny Birmingham plate. Suppose you pretend to 
be richer and grander than you ought to be — you are a Dinner- 
giving Snob. And oh, I tremble to think how many and many 
a one will read this ! 

A man who entertains in this way — and, alas, how few do 


70 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


not ! — is like a fellow who would borrow his neighbor’s coat to 
make a show in, or a lady who flaunts in the diamonds from 
next door — a humbug, in a word, and amongst the Snobs he 
must be set down. 

A man who goes out of his natural sphere of society to ask 
Lords, Generals, Aldermen, and other persons of fashion, but 
is niggardly of his hospitality towards his own equals, is a 
Dinner-giving Snob. My dear friend. Jack Tufthunt, for ex- 
ample, knows 0716 Lord whom he met at a watering-place : old 
Lord Mumble, who is as toothless as a three-months-old baby, 
and as mum as an undertaker, and as dull as — well, we will not 
particularize. Tufthunt never has a dinner now iDut you see 
this solemn old toothless patrician at the right-hand of Mrs. 
Tufthunt — Tufthunt is a Dinner-giving Snob. 

Old Livermore, old Soy, old Chutney, the East Indian 
Director, old Cutler, the Surgeon, &:c., — that society of old 
fogies, in fine, who give each other dinners round and round, 
and dine for the mere purjDOse of guttling — these, again, are 
Dinner-giving Snobs. 

Again, my friend Lady MacScrew, who has three grenadier 
flunkeys in lace round the table, and serves up a scrag of mutton 
on silver, and dribbles you out bad sherry and port by thimble- 
fuls, is a Dinner-giving Snob of the other sort ; and I confess, 
for my part, I would rather dine with old Livermore or old Soy 
than with her Ladyship. 

Stinginess is snobbish. Ostentation is snobbish. Too 
great profusion is snobbish. Tuft-hunting is snobbish. But I 
own there are people more snobbish than all those whose defects 
are above mentioned : viz. : those individuals who can, and 
don’t give dinners at all. The man without hospitality shall 
never sit siih iisdcni trahihiis with 7ne. Let the sordid wretch go 
mumble his bone alone ! 

What, again, is true hospitality } Alas, my dear friends 
and brother Snobs ! how little do we meet of it after all ! Are 
the motives pure which, induce your friends to ask you to dinner ? 
This has often come across me. Does your entertainer want 
something from you ? For instance, I am not of a suspicious 
turn ; but it is a fact that when Hookey is bringing out a new 
work, he asks the critics all round to dinner ; that when Walker 
has got his picture ready for the Exhibition, he somehow grows 
exceedingly hospitable, and has his friends of the press to a 
quiet cutlet and a glass of Sillery. Old Hunks, the miser, who 
died lately (leaving his money to his housekeeper) lived many 
years on the fat of the land, by simply taking down, at all his 


OmiNG-OUT SNOBS. 


71 


friends’, the names and Christian names of all the children. 
But though you may have your own opinion about the hospitality 
of your acquaintances ; and though men who ask you from 
sordid motives are most decidedly Dinner-giving Snobs, it is 
best not to inquire into their motives too keenly. Be not too 
curious about the mouth of a gift-horse. After all, a man does 
not intend to insult you by asking you to dinner. 

Though, for that matter, I know some characters about 
town who actually consider themselves injured and insulted if 
the dinner or the company is not to their liking. There is 
Guttleton, who dines at home off a shilling’s-worth of beef from 
the cook shop, but if he is asked to dine at a house where there 
are not pease at the end of May, or cucumbers in March along 
with the turbot, thinks himself insulted by being invited. ‘‘ Good 
Ged ! ” says he, what the deuce do the Forkers mean by ask- 
ing me to a family dinner ! I can get mutton at home ; ” or 
‘‘ What infernal impertinence it is of the Spooners to get entrees 
from the pastry-cook’s, and fancy that / am to be deceived with 
their stories about their French cook! ” Then, again, there is 
Jack Puddington — I saw that honest fellow t’other day quite in 
a rage, because, as chance would have it. Sir John Carver 
asked him to meet the very same party he had met at Colonel 
Cramley’s the day before, and he had not got up a new set of 
stories to entertain them. Poor Dinner-giving Snobs I you 
don’t know what small thanks you. get for all your pains and 
money 1 Flow we Dining-out Snobs sneer at your cookery, 
and pooh-pooh your old hock, and are incredulous about your 
four-and-sixpenny champagne, and know that the side-dishes of 
to-day are rechauffes from the dinner of yesterday, and mark 
how certain dishes are whisked off the table untasted, so that 
they may figure at the banquet to-morrow. Whenever, for my 
partj I see the head man particularly anxious to escamoter a 
fricandeau or a blanc-mange, I always call out, and insist upon 
massacring it with a spoon. All this sort of conduct makes 
one popular with the Dinner-giving Snob. One friend of mine, 
I know, has made a prodigious sensation in good society, by 
announcing h,propos of certain dishes when offered to him, that 
he never eats aspic except at Lord Tittup’s, and that Lady 
Jiminy’s chefis the only man in London who knows how to 
dress — Filet en serpenteau — or Supreme de volatile aux triiffes. 


72 


THE BOOH OF SNOBS 


CHAPTER XX. 

DINNER-GIVING SNOBS FURTHER CONSIDERED. 

If my friends would but follow the present prevailing 
fashion, I think they ought to give me a testimonial for the 
paper on Dinner-giving Snobs, which I am now writing. What 
do you say now to a handsome comfortable dinner-service of 
plate (not including plates, for I hold silver plates to be sheer 
wantonness, and would almost as soon think of silver tea-cups), 
a couple of neat teapots, a coffee-pot, trays, &c., with a little 
inscription to my wife, Mrs. Snob ; and a half-score of silver 
tankards for the little Snoblings, to glitter on the homely table 
where they partake of their quotidian mutton ? 

If I had my way, and my plans could be carried out, dinner- 
giving would increase as much on the one hand as dinner-giving 
Snobbishness would diminish : — to my mind the most amiable 
part of the work lately published by my esteemed friend (if 
upon a very brief acquaintance he will allow me to call him so), 
Alexis Soyer, the regenerator — \vhat he (in his noble style) 
would call the most succulent, savory, and elegant passages — 
are those which relate, not to the grand banquets and ceremo- 
nial dinners, but to his dinners at home.’’ 

The “ dinner at home ” ought to be the centre of the whole 
system of dinner-giving. Your usual style of meal — that is, 
plenteous, comfortable, and in its perfection — should be that 
to which you welcome your friends, as it is that of which you 
partake yourself. 

For, towards what woman in the world do I entertain a 
higher regard than towards the beloved partner of my existence, 
Mrs. Snob ? Who should have a greater place in my affections 
than her six brothers (three or four of whom we are pretty sure 
will favor us with their company at seven o’clock), or her 
angelic mother, my own valued mother-in-law ? — for whom, 
finally, would I wish to cater more generously than for your very 
humble servant, the present writer ? Now, nobody supposes 
that the Birmingham plate is had out, the disguised carpet- 
beaters introduced to the exclusion of the neat parlor-maid, 
the miserable C7itrees from the pastry-cook’s' ordered in, and the 
children packed off (as it is supposed) to the nursery, but really 
only to the staircase, down which they slide during the dinner- 


£>mNMR-GIVING SNOBS FURTHER CONSIDERED, 73 

time, waylaying the dishes as they come out, and fingering the 
round bumps on the jellies, and the forced-meat balls in the 
soup, — nobody, I say, supposes that a dinner at home is charac- 
terized by the horrible ceremony, the foolish makeshifts, the 
mean pomp and ostentation which distinguish our banquets on 
grand field-days. 

Such a notion is monstrous. I would as soon think of 
having my dearest Bessy sitting opposite me in a turban and 
bird of paradise, and showing her jolly mottled arms out of 
blonde sleeves in her famous red satin gown : ay, or of having 
Mr. Toole every day, in a white waistcoat, at my back, shouting, 
‘‘ Silence faw the chair ! ’’ 

Now, if this be the case ; if the Brummagem-plate pomp 
and the processions of disguised footmen are odious and foolish 
in every-day life, why not always ? Why should Jones and I, 
who are in the middle rank, alter the modes of our being to 
assume an eclat which does not belong to us — to entertain our 
friends, who (if we are worth anything, and honest fellows at 
bottom,) are men of the middle rank too, who are not in the 
least deceived by our temporary splendor, and who play off 
exactly the same absurd trick upon us when they ask us to dine ? 

If it be pleasant to dine with your friends, as all persons 
with good stomachs and kindly hearts will, I presume, allow it 
to be, it is better to dine twice than to dine once. It is im- 
possible for men of small means to be continually spending 
five-and-twenty or thirty shillings on each friend who sits down 
to their table. People dine for less. I myself have seen, at 
my favorite Club (the Senior United Service), His Grace the 
Duke of Wellington quite contented with the joint, one-and- 
three, and half-pint of sherry wine, nine ; and if his Grace, why 
not you and I 

This rule I have made, and found the benefit of. Whenever 
I ask a couple of Dukes and a Marquis or so to dine with me, 
I set them down to a piece of beef, or a leg-of-mutton and 
trimmings. The grandees thank you for this simplicity, and 
appreciate the same. My dear Jones, ask any of those whom 
you have the honor of knowing, if such be not the case. 

I am far from wishing that their Graces should treat me in 
a similar fashion. Splendor is a part of their station, as decent 
comfort (let us trust), of yours and mine. Fate has comfort- 
ably appointed gold plate for some, and has bidden others 
contentedly to wear the willow-pattern. And being perfectly 
contented (indeed humbly thankful — for look around, 0 Jones, 
and see the myriads who. are not so fortunate,) to wear honest 


74 


THE BOOK OF SNOBF, 


linen, while magnificos of the world are adorned with cambric 
and point-lace, surely we ought to hold as miserable, envious 
fools, those wretched Beaux Tibbs’s of society, who sport a 
lace dickey, and nothing besides, — the poor silly jays, who trail 
a peacock’s feather behind them, and think to simulate the 
gorgeous bird whose nature it is to strut on palace-terraces, and 
to flaunt his magnificent fan-tail in the sunshine ! 

The jays with peacocks’ feathers are the Snobs of this 
world : and never, since the days of ^sop, were they more 
numerous in any land than they are at present in this free 
country. 

How does this most ancient apologue apply to the subject 
in hand — the Dinner-giving Snob. The imitation of the great 
is universal in this City, from the palaces of Kensingtonia and 
Belgravia, even to the remotest corner of Brunswick Square. 
Peacocks’ feathers are stuck in the tails of most families. 
Scarce one of us domestic birds but imitates the lanky, pav- 
onine strut, and shrill, genteel scream. O you misguided 
dinner-giving Snobs, think how much pleasure you lose, and 
how much mischief you do with your absurd grandeurs and 
hypocrisies ! You stuff each other with unnatural forced-meats, 
and entertain each other to the ruin of friendship (let alone 
health) and the destruction of hospitality and good fellowship 
— you, who but for the peacock’s tail might chatter away so 
much at your ease, and be so jovial and happy ! 

When a man goes into a great set company of dinner-giving 
and dinner-receiving Snobs, if he has a philosophical turn of 
mind, he will consider what a huge humbug the whole affair is ; 
the dishes, and the drink, and the servants, and the plate, and 
the host and hostess, and the conversation, and the company, 
— the philosopher included. 

The host is smiling, and hob-nobbing, and talking up and 
down the table ; but a prey to secret terrors and anxieties, lest 
the wines he has brought up from the cellar should prove in- 
sufficient ; lest a corked bottle should destroy his calculations ; 
or our friend the carpet-beater, by making some bhnie^ should 
disclose his real quality of green-grocer, and show that he is not 
the family butler. 

The hostess is smiling resolutely through all the courses, 
smiling through her agony ; though her heart is in the kitchen, 
and she is speculating with terror lest therg be any disaster 
there. If the soicffle should collapse, or if Wiggins does not 
send the ices in time — she feels as if she would commit suicide 
— that smiling, jolly woman ! 


SOM^ CONTINENTAL SNOBS. 


75 


The children up stairs are yelling, as their maid is crimping 
their miserable ringlets with hot tongs, tearing Miss Emmy’s 
hair out by the roots, or scrubbing Miss Polly’s dumpy nose 
with mottled soap till the little wretch screams herself into fits. 
The young males of the family are employed, as we have stated, 
in piratical exploits upon the landing-place. 

The servants are not servants, but the before-mentioned 
retail tradesmen. 

The plate is not plate, but a mere shiny Birmingham lacker ; 
and so is the hospitality, and everything else. 

The talk is Birmingham talk. The wag of the party, with 
bitterness in his heart, having just quitted his laundress, who is 
dunning him for her bill, is firing off good stories ; and the 
opposition wag is furious that he cannot get an innings. Jaw- 
kins, the great conversationalist, is scornful and indignant with 
the pair of them, because he is kept out of court. Young 
Muscadel, that cheap dandy, is talking fashion and Almack’s 
out of the Mornhig Fost^ and disgusting his neighbor, Mrs. Fox, 
who reflects that she has never been there. The widow is vexed 
out of patience, because her daughter Maria has got a place 
beside young Cambric, the penniless curate, and not by Colonel 
Goldmore, the rich widower from India. The Doctor’s wife is 
sulky, because she has not been led out before the barrister’s 
lady ; old Doctor Cork is grumbling at the wine, and Guttleton 
sneering at the cookery. 

And to think that all these people might be so happy, and 
easy, and friendly, were they brought together in a natural un- 
pretentious way, and but for an unhappy passion for peacocks’ 
feathers in England. Gentle shades of Marat and Robespierre 1 
when I see how all the honesty of society is corrupted among 
us by the miserable fashion-worship, I feel as angry as Mrs. 
Fox just mentioned, and ready to order a general battue of 
peacocks. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

SOME CONTINENTAL SNOBS. 

Now that September has come, and all our Parliamentary 
duties are over, perhaps no class of Snobs are in such high 
feather as the Continental Snobs. I watch these daily as they 


76 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


commence their migration from the beach at Folkestone. I 
see shoals of them depart (not perhaps without an innate long- 
ing too to quit the Island along with those happy Snobs). Fare- 
well, cjear friends, I say : you little know that the individual 
who regards you from the beach is your friend and histori- 
ographer and brother. 

I went to-day to see our excellent friend Snooks, on board 
the ‘‘Queen of the French ; many scores of Snobs were there, 
on the deck of that fine ship, marching forth in their pride and 
bravery. They will be at Ostend in four hours ; they will inun- 
date the Continent next week ; they will carry into far lands 
the famous image of the British Snob. I shall not see them — 
but am with them in spirit : and indeed there is hardly a 
country in the known and civilized world in which these eyes 
have not beheld them. 

I have seen Snobs, in pink coats and hunting-boots, scouring 
over the Campagna of Rome ; and have heard their oaths and 
their well-known slang in the galleries of the Vatican, and 
under the shadowy arches of the Colosseum. I have met a 
Snob on a dromedary in the desert, and picnicking under tte 
Pyramid of Cheops. I like to think how many gallant British 
Snobs there are, at this minute of writing, pushing their heads 
out of every window in the courtyard of “ Meurice’s in the 
Rue de iRivoli ; or roaring out, “ Garsong, du pang,” “ Garson, 
du vang ; ” or swaggering down the Toledo at Naples ; or even 
how many will be on the look-out for Snooks on Ostend Pier, 
— for Snooks, and the rest of the Snobs on board the “ Queen 
of the French.” 

Look at the Marquis of Carabas and his two carriages. 
My Lady Marchioness comes on board, looks round with that 
happy air of mingled terror and impertinence which distin- 
guishes her ladyship, and rushes to her carriage, for it is 
impossible that she should mingle with the other snobs on deck. 
There she sits, and will be ill in private. The strawberry- 
leaves on her chariot-panels are engraved on her ladyships^ 
heart. If she were going to heaven instead of to Ostend, I 
rather think she would expect to have des places reservecs for 
her, and would send to order the best roomr:. A courier, with 
his money-bag of office round his shoulders — a huge scowling 
footman, whose dark pepper-and-salt livery glistens with the 
heraldic insignia of the Carabases — a brazen-looking, tawdry 
French femme- de-chamb re (none but a female pen can do justice 
to that wonderful tawdry toilette of the lady's maid en voyage) 
— and a miserable dame de compagnie., are ministering to the 


SOME CONTINENTAL SNOBS. 


77 


wants of her ladyship and her King Charles’s spaniel. They 
are rushing to and tro with eau-de-Cologne, pocket-handker- 
chiefs, which are all fringe and cipher, and popping mysterious 
cushions behind and before, and in every available corner of 
the carriage. 

The little Marquis, her husband, is walking about the deck 
in a bewildered manner, with a lean daughter on each arm : 
the carroty-tufted hope of the family is already smoking on the 
foredeck in a travelling costume checked all over, and in little 
lacker-tipped jean boots, and a shirt embroidered with pink 
boa-constrictors. What is it that gives travelling Snobs such a 
marvellous propensity to rush into a costume } Why should a 
man not travel in a coat, &c. ? but think proper to dress him- 
self like a harlequin in mourning ? See, even young Alder- 
manbury, the tallow merchant, who has just stepped on board, 
has got a travelling-dress gaping all over with pockets ; and 
little Tom Tapeworm, the lawyer’s clerk out of the City, who 
has but three weeks’ leave, turns out in gaiters and a bran-new 
shooting-jacket, and must let the mustaches grow on his little 
snuffy upper lip, forsooth ! 

Pompey Hicks is giving elaborate directions to his servant, 
and asking loudly, ‘‘ Davis, where’s the dwessing-case 'I ” and 
‘‘ Davis, you’d best take the pistol-case into the cabin.” 
Little Pompey travels with a dressing-case, and without a 
beard : who he is going to shoot with his pistols, who on earth 
can tell ? and what he is to do with his servant but wait upon 
him, I am at a loss to conjecture. 

Look at honest Nathan Houndsditch and his lady, and their 
little son. What a noble air of blazing contentment illumi- 
nates the features of those Snobs of Eastern race ! What a 
toilette Houndsditch’s is ! What rings and chains, what gold- 
headed canes and diamonds, what a tuft the rogue has got to 
his chin (the rogue ! he will never spare himself any cheap en- 
joyment !) Little Houndsditch has a little cane with a gilt 
head and little mosaic ornaments — altogether an extra air. As 
for the lady, she is all the colors of the rainbow ! she has a 
pink parasol, with a white lining, and a yellow bonnet, and an 
emerald-green shawl, and a shot-silk pelisse ; and drab boots 
and rhubarb-colored gloves : and parti-colored glass buttons, 
expanding from the size of a fourpenny-piece to a crown, glitter 
and twiddle all down the front of her gorgeous costume. I 
have said before, I like to look at the Peoples ” on their gala 
days, they are so picturesquely and outrageously splendid and 
happy. 


78 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


Yonder comes Captain Bull ; spick and span, tight and trim ; 
who travels for four or six months every year of his life ; 
who does not commit himself by luxury of raiment or insolence 
of demeanor, but I think is as great a Snob as any man on 
board. Bull passes the season in London, sponging for dinners, 
and sleeping in a garret near his Club. Abroad, he has been 
everywhere ; he knows the best wine at every inn in every capi- 
tal in Europe ; lives with the best English company there ; has 
seen every palace and picture-gallery from Madrid to Stock- 
holm j speaks an abominable little jargon of half a dozen lan- 
guages — and knows nothing — nothing. Bull hunts tufts on the 
Continent, and is a sort of amateur courier. He will scrape 
acquaintance with old Carabas before# they make Ostend ; and 
will remind his lordship that he met him at Vienna twenty years 
ago, or gave him a glass of Schnapps up the Righi. We have 
said Bull knows nothing : he knows the birth, arms, and pedi- 
gree of all the peerage, has poked his little eyes into every one 
of the carriages on board — their panels noted and their crests 
surveyed ; he knows all the Continental stories of English 
scandal — how Count Towrowski ran off with Miss Baggs at 
Naples — how very thick Lady Smigsmag was with young Corni- 
chon of the French Legation at Florence — the exact amount 
which Jack Deuceace won of Bob Greengoose at Baden — what 
it is that made the Staggs settle on the Continent : the sum for 
which the O’Goggarty estates are mortgaged, &c. If he can’t 
catch a lord he will hook on to a baronet, or else the old wretch 
will catch hold of some beardless young stripling of fashion, 
and show him life ” in various and amiable and inaccessible 
quarters. Faugh ! the old brute ! If he has every one of the 
vices of the most boisterous youth, at least he is comforted by 
having no conscience. He is utterly stupid, but of a jovial turn. 
He believes himself to be quite a respectable member of so- 
ciety : but perhaps the only good action he ever did in his life is 
the involuntary one of giving an example to be avoided, and 
showing what an odious thing in the social picture is that figure 
of the debauched old man who passes through life rather a decor- 
ous Silenus, and dies some day in his garret, alone, unrepent- 
ing, and unnoted, save by his astonished heirs, who find that 
the dissolute old miser has left money behind him. See ! he is 
up to old Carabas already ! I told you he would. 

Yonder you see the old Lady Mary MacScrew, and those 
middle-aged young women her daughters ; they are going to 
cheapen and haggle in Belgium and up the Rhine until they 
meet with a boarding-house where they can live upon less board- 


SOME CONTINENTAL SNOBS. 


79 


wages than her ladyship pays her footmen. But she will exact 
and receive considerable respect from the British Snobs located 
in the watering-place which she selects for her summer resi- 
dence, being the daughter of the Earl of Haggistoun. That 
broad-shouldered buck, with the great whiskers and the cleaned 
white kid-gloves, is Mr. Phelim Clancy of Poldoodystown : he 
calls himself Mr. De Clancy; he endeavors to disguise his na- 
tive brogue with the richest superposition of English ; and if 
you play at billiards or ecarte with him, the chances are that you 
will win the first game, and he the seven or eight games ensuing. 

That overgrown lady with the four daughters, and the young 
dandy from the University, her son, is Mrs. Kewsy, the emi- 
nent barrister’s lady, who would rather die than not be in the 
fashion. She has the Peerage ” in her carpet-bag, you may 
be sure ; but she is altogether cut out by Mrs. Quod, the at- 
torney’s wife, whose carriage, with the apparatus of rumbles, 
dickeys, and imperials, scarcely yields in splendor to the Mar- 
quis of Carabas’s own travelling-chariot, and whose courier has 
even bigger whiskers and a larger morocco money-bag than the 
Marquis’s own travelling gentleman. Remark her well : she is 
talking to Mr. Spout, the new Member for Jawborough, who is 
going out to inspect the operations of the Zollverein, and will 
put some very severe questions to Lord Palmerston next ses- 
sion upon England and her relations with the Prussian-blue 
trade, the Naples-soap trade, the German-tinder trade, &c. 
Spout will patronize King Leopold at Brussels ; will write let- 
ters from abroad to the jawborough Independent ; and in his 
quality of Member du Parliamo7ig Britanniqtie^ will expect to 
be invited to a famil} dinner with every sovereign whose do- 
minions he honors with a visit during his tour. 

The next person is but hark ! the bell for shore is ring- 

ing, and, shaking Snooks’s hand cordially, we rush on to the 
pier, waving him a farewell as the noble black ship cuts keenly 
through the sunny azure waters, bearing away that cargo of 
Snobs outward bound. 


So 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS 


CHAPTER XXII 

CONTINENTAL SNOBBERY CONTINUED. 

We are accustomed to laugh at the French for their brag- 
gadocio propensities, and intolerable vanity about la France, 
la gloire, I’Empereur, and the like ; and yet I think in my heart 
that the British Snob, for conceit and self-sufficiency and brag- 
gartism in his way, is without a parallel. There is always 
something uneasy in a Frenchman's conceit. He brags with 
so much fury, shrieking, and gesticulation ; yells out so loudly 
that the Frangais is at the head of civilization, the centre of 
thought, &c. ; that one can’t but see the poor fellow has a lurk- 
ing doubt in his own mind that he is not the wonder he pro- 
fesses to be. 

About the British Snobs, on the contrary, there is commonly 
no noise, no bluster, but the calmness of profound conviction. 
We are better than all the world ; we don’t question the 
opinion at all ; it’s an axiom. And when a Frenchman bellows 
out, “ La France^ Monsieur^ la Fra7ice est a tete du 7nonde civilise I ” 
we laugh good-naturedly at the frantic poor devil. We are the 
first chop of the world : we know the fact so well in our secret 
hearts that a claim set up elsewhere is simply ludicrous. My 
dear brother reader, say, as a man of honor, if you are not of 
this opinion 1 Do you think a Frenchman your equal? You 
don’t — you gallant British Snob — you know you don’t : no 
more, perhaps, does the Snob your humble servant, brother. 

And I am inclined to think it is this conviction, and the 
consequent bearing of the Englishman towards the foreigner 
whom he condescends to visit, this confidence of superiority 
which holds up the head of the owner of every English hat-box 
from Sicily to St. Petersburg, that makes us so magnificently 
hated throughout Europe as we are ; this — more than all our 
little victories, and of which many Frenchmen and Spaniards 
have never heard — this amazing and indomitable insular pride, 
which animates my lord in his travelling-carriage as well as 
John in the rumble. 

If you read the old Chronicles of the French wars, you find 
precisely the same character of the Englishman, and Henry 
V.’s people behaved with just the cool domineering manner of 
our gallant veterans of France and the Peninsula. Did you 


CONTINENTAL SNOBBERY CONTINUED. 


8l 


never hear Colonel Cutler and Major Slasher talking over the 
war after dinner ? or Captain Boarder describing his action 
with the Indomptable ? ‘‘ Hang the fellows/’ says Boarder, 

“ their practice was very good. I was beat off three times be- 
fore I took her.” Cuss those carabineers of Milhaud’s,” 
says Slasher, ‘‘what work they made of our light cavalry!” 
implying a sort of surprise that the Frenchman should stand 
up against Britons at all : a good-natured wonder that the blind, 
mad, vain-glorious, brave poor devils should actually have the 
courage to resist an Englishman. Legions of such Englishmen 
are patronizing Europe at this moment, being kind to the Pope, 
or good-natured to the King of Holland, or condescending to 
inspect the Prussian reviews. When Nicholas came here, who 
reviews a quarter of a million of pairs of mustaches to his break- 
fast every morning, we took him olf to Windsor and showed him 
two whole regiments of six or eight hundred Britons apiece, 
with an air as much as to say, — “ There, my boy, look at that. 
Those are Englishmen., those are, and your master whenever 
you please,” as the nursery song says. The British Snob is 
long, long past skepticism, and can afford to laugh quite good-hu- 
moredly at those conceited Yankees, or besotted little French- 
men, who set up as models of mankind. They forsooth 1 

I have been led into these remarks by listening to an old 
fellow at the Hotel du Nord, at Boulogne, and who is evidently 
of the Slasher sort. He came down and seated himself at the 
breakfast-table, with a surly scowl on his salmon-colored blood- 
shot face, strangling in a tight, cross-barred cravat ; his linen 
and his appointments so perfectly stiff and spotless that every- 
body at once recognized him as a dear countryman. Only our 
wine and other admirable institutions could have produced a 
figure so insolent, so stupid, so gentlemanlike. After a while 
our attention was called to him by his roaring out, in a voice 
of plethoric fury, “ O ! ” 

Everybody turned round at the “ O,” conceiving the Colonel 
to be, as his countenance denoted him, in intense pain ; but 
the waiters knew better, and instead of being alarmed, brought 
the Colonel the kettle. “ O,” it appears, is the French for hot- 
water. The Colonel (though he despises it heartily) thinks he 
speaks the language remarkably well. Whilst he was inhaust- 
ing his smoking tea, which went rolling and gurgling down his 
throat, and hissing over the “hot coppers” of that respect- 
able veteran, a friend joined him, with a wizened face and very 
black wig, evidently a Colonel too. 

The two warriors, waggling their old heads at each other, 
6 


82 


THE BOOH OF SNOBS. 


presently joined breakfast, and fell into conversation, and we 
had the advantage of hearing about the old war, and some 
pleasant conjectures as to the next, which they considered im- 
minent. They psha’d the French fleet ; they pooh-pooh’d the 
French commercial marine ; they showed how, in a war, there 

would be a cordon a cordong, by ” ) of steamers along 

our coast, and “ by ready at a minute to land anywhere 

on the other shore, to give the French as good a thrashing as 
they got in the last war, “by In fact, a rumbling can- 

nonade of oaths was fired by the two veterans during the whole 
of their conversation. 

There was a Frenchman in the room, but as he had not 
been above ten years in London, of course he did not speak the 
language, and lost the benefit of the conversation. “ But, O 
my country ! ” said I to myself, “ it’s no wonder that you are 
so beloved ! If I were a Frenchman, how I would hate you ! 

That brutal, ignorant, peevish bully of an Englishman is 
showing himself in every city of Europe. One of the dullest 
creatures under heaven, he goes trampling Europe under foot, 
shouldering his way into galleries and cathedrals, and bustling 
into palaces with his buckram uniform. At church or theatre, 
gala or picture-gallery, his face never varies. A thousand de- 
lightful sights pass before his bloodshot eyes, and don’t affect 
him. Countless brilliant scenes of life and manners are shown 
him, but never move him. He goes to church, and calls the 
practices there degrading and superstitious ; as if his altar was 
the only one that was acceptable. He goes to picture-galleries, 
and is more ignorant about Art than a French shoeblack. Art, 
Nature pass, and there is no dot of admiration in his stupid 
eyes ; nothing moves him, except when a very great man comes 
his way, and then the rigid, proud, self-confident, inflexible 
British Snob can be as humble as a flunkey and as supple as a 
harlequin. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

ENGLISH SNOBS ON THE CONTINENT. 

“What is the use of Lord Rosse’s telescope ? ” my friend 
Panwiski exclaimed the other day. “ It only enables you to see 
a few hundred thousands of miles farther. What were thought 
to be mere nebulas, turn out to be most perceivable starry 


SNOBS ON THE CONTINENT, 83 

systems ; and beyond these, you see other nebulae, which a 
more powerful glass will show to be stars, again ; and so they 
go on glittering and winking away into eternity.” With which 
my friend Pan, heaving a great sigh, as if confessing his in- 
ability to look Infinity in the face, sank back resigned, and 
swallowed a large bumper of claret. 

I (who, like other great men, have but one idea,) thought 
to myself, that as the stars are, so are the Snobs : — the more 
you gaze upon those luminaries, the more you behold — now 
nebulously congregated — now faintly distinguishable — now 
brightly defined — until they twinkle off in endless blazes, and 
fade into the immeasurable darkness. I am but as a child 
playing on the sea-shore. Some telescopic philosopher will 
arise one day, some great Snobonomer, to find the laws of the 
great science which we are now merely playing with, and to de- 
fine, and settle, and classify that which is at present but vague 
theory, and loose though elegant assertion. 

Yes : a single eye can but trace a very few and simple 
varieties of the enormous universe of Snobs. I sometimes 
think of appealing to the public, and calling together a congress 
of sava7is^ such as met at Southampton — each to bring his con- 
tributions and read his paper on the Great Subject. For what 
can a single poor few do, even with the subject at present in 
hand ? English Snobs on the Continent — though they are a 
hundred thousand times less numerous than on their native 
island, yet even these few are too many. One can only fix a 
stray one here and there. The individuals are caught — the 
thousands escape. I have noted down but three whom I have 
met with in my walk this morning through this pleasant marine 
city of Boulogne. 

There is the English RafE Snob, that frequents esfammets 
diwd. cabarets ; who is heard yelling, “We won’t go home till 
morning ! ” and startling the midnight echoes of quiet Con- 
tinental towns with shrieks of English slang. The boozy un- 
shorn wretch is seen hovering round quays as packets arrive, 
and tippling drams in inn bars where he gets credit. He talks 
French with slang familiarity : he and his like quite people the 
debt-prisons on the Continent. He plays pool at the billiard- 
houses, and may be seen engaged at cards and dominoes of 
forenoons. His signature is to be seen on countless bills of 
exchange : it belonged to an honorable family once, very likely ; 
for the English RafE most probably began by being a gentle- 
man, and has a father over the water who is ashamed to hear 
his name. He has cheated the old “governor ” repeatedly in 


S4 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


better days, and swindled his sisters of their portions, and 
robbed his younger brothers. Now he is living on his wife’s 
jointure : she is hidden away in some dismal garret, patching 
shabby finery and cobbling up old clothes for her children — 
the most miserable and slatternly of women. 

Or sometimes the poor woman and her daughters go about 
timidly, giving lessons in English and music, or do embroidery 
and work under-hand, to purchase the means for the pot-au-fcu ; 
while Raff is swaggering on the quay, or tossing off glasses of 
cognac at the cafL The unfortunate creature has a child still 
every year, and her constant hypocrisy is to try and make her 
girls believe that their father is a respectable man, and to 
huddle him out of the way when the brute comes home drunk. 

Those poor ruined souls get together and have a society 
of their own, the which it is very affecting to watch — those 
cawdry pretences at gentility, those flimsy attempts at gayety : 
those woful sallies : that jingling old piano ; oh, it makes the 
heart sick to see and hear them. As Mrs. Raff, with her com- 
pany of pale daughters, gives a penny tea to Mrs. Diddler, they 
talk about by-gone times and the fine society they kept ; and 
they sing feeble songs out of tattered old music-books ^ and 
while engaged in this sort of entertainment, in comes Captain 
Raff with his greasy hat on one side, and straightway the whole 
of the dismal room reeks with a mingled odor of smoke and 
spirits. 

Has not everybody who has lived abroad met Captain Raff? 
His name is proclaimed, every now and then, by Mr. Sheriff’s 
Officer Hemp ; and about Boulogne, and Paris, and Brussels, 
there are so many of his sort that I will lay a wager that I shall 
be accused of gross personality for showing him up. Many a 
less irreclaimable villain is transported ; many a more hcHiorable 
man is at present at the treadmill ; and although we are the 
noblest, greatest, most religious, and most moral people in the 
world, I would still like to know where, except in the United 
Kingdom, debts are a matter of joke, and making tradesmen 
suffer ” a sport that gentlemen own to ? It is dishonorable 
to owe money in France. You never hear people in other parts 
of Europe brag of their swindling ; or see a prison in a large 
Continental town which is not more or less peopled with Eng- 
lish rogues. 

A still more loathsome and dangerous Snob than the above 
transparent and passive scamp, is frequent on the continent of 
Europe, and my young Snob friends who are travelling thither 
should be especially warned against him. Captain Legg is a 


ENGLISH SNOBS ON THE CONTINENT, 85 

gentleman, like Raff, though perhaps of a better degree. He 
has robbed his family too, but of a great deal more, and has 
boldly dishonored bills for thousands, where Raff has been 
boggling over the clumsy conveyance of a ten-pound note. 
Legg is always at the best inn, with the finest waistcoats and 
mustaches, or tearing about in the flashiest of britzkas, while 
poor Raff is tipsifying himself with spirits, and smoking cheap 
tobacco. It is amazing to think that Legg, so often shown up, 
and known everywhere, is flourishing yet. He would sink into 
utter ruin, but for the constant and ardent love of gentility that 
distinguishes the English Snob. There is many a young fellow 
of the middle classes who must know Legg to be a rogue and a 
cheat ; and yet from his desire to be in the fashion, and his 
admiration of tip-top swells, and from his ambition to air him- 
self by the side of a Lord’s son, will let Legg make an income 
out of him ; content to pay, so long as he can enioy that 
society. Many a worthy father of a family, when he hears that 
his son is riding about with Captain Legg, Lord Levant’s son, 
is rather pleased that young Hopeful should be in such good 
company. 

Legg and his friend. Major Macer, make professional tours 
through Europe, and are to be found at the right places at the 
right time. Last year I heard how my young acquaintance, 
Mr. Muff, from Oxford, going to see a little life at a Carnival 
ball at Paris, was accosted by an Englishman who did not 

know a word of the d language, and hearing Muff speak it 

so admirably, begged him to interpret to a waiter with whom 
there was a dispute about refreshments. It was quite a com- 
fort, the stranger said, to see an honest English face ; and did 
Muff know where there was a good place for supper ? So those 
two went to supper, and who should come in, of all men in the 
world, but Major Macer.? And so Legg introduced Macer, 
and so there came on a little intimacy, and three-card loo, 
&c., &c. Year after year scores of Muffs, in various places 
of the world, are victimized by Legg and Macer. The story is 
so stale, the trick of seduction so entirely old and clumsy, 
that it is only a wonder people can be taken in any more : 
but the temptations of vice and gentility together are too 
much for young English Snobs, and those simple young vic- 
tims are caught fresh eveiy^ day. Though it is only to be 
kicked and cheated by men of fashion, your true British Snob 
will present himself for the honor. 

I need not allude here to that very common British Snob, 
wh6 makes desperate efforts at becoming intimate with the 


86 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


great Continental aristocracy, such as old Rolls, the baker, 
who has set up his quarters in the Faubourg Saint Germain, 
and will receive none but Carlists, and no French gentleman 
under the rank of a Marquis. We can all of us laugh at that 
fellow’s pretensions well enough — we who tremble before a 
great man of our own nation. But, as you say, my brave and 
honest John Bull of a Snob, a French Marquis of twenty de- 
scents is very different from an English Peer ; and a pack of 
beggarly German and Italian Fuersten and Principi awaken 
the scorn of an honest-minded Briton. But our aristocracy ! — 
that’s a very different matter. They are the real leaders of 
the world — the real old original and-no-mistake nobility. Off 
with your cap, Snob ; down on your knees, Snob, and truckle. 


CPIAPTER XXIV. 

ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 

Tired of the town, where the sight of the closed shutters 
of the nobility, ray friends, makes my heart sick in my walks • 
afraid almost to sit in those vast Pall Mall solitudes, the Clubs, 
and of annoying the Club waiters, who might, I thought, be 
going to shoot in the country, but for me, I determined on a 
brief tour in the provinces, and paying some visits in the coun- 
try which were long due. 

My first visit was to my friend Major Ponto (H. P. of the 
Horse Marines), in Mangelwurzelshire. The Major, in his 
little phaeton, was in waiting to take me up at the station. 
The vehicle was not certainly splendid, but such a carriage as 
would accommodate a plain man (as Ponto said he was) and a 
numerous family. We drove by beautiful fresh fields and green 
hedges, through a cheerful English landscape ; the high-road, 
as smooth and trim as the way in a nobleman’s park, was 
charmingly checkered with cool shade and golden sunshine. 
Rustics in snowy smock-frocks jerked their hats off smiling as 
we passed. Children, with cheeks as red as the apples in the 
orchards, bobbed curtseys to us at the cottage doors. Blue 
church spires rose here and there in the distance : and as the 
buxom gardener’s wife opened the white gate at the Major’s 
little ivy-covered lodge, and we drove through the neat planta- 


ON' SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 


87 


tions of firs and evergreens, up to the house, my bosom felt 
a joy and elation which I thought it was impossible to experi- 
ence in the smoky atmosphere of a town. Here,’’ I mentally 
exclaimed, ‘‘is all peace, plenty, happiness. Here, I shall be 
rid of Snobs. There can be none in this charming Arcadian 
spot.” 

Stripes, the Major’s man (formerly corporal in his gallant 
corps), received my portmanteau, and an elegant little present, 
which I had brought from town as a peace-offering to Mrs. 
Ponto ; viz. : a cod and oysters from Grove’s, in a hamper about 
the size of a coffin. 

Ponto’s house (“ The Evergreens ” Mrs. P. has christened 
it) is a perfect Paradise of a place. It is all over creepers, and 
bow-windows, and verandas. A wavy lawn tumbles up and 
down all round it, with flower-beds of wonderful shapes, and 
zigzag gravel walks, and beautiful but damp shrubberies, of 
myrtles and glistening laurentines, which have procured it its 
change of name. It was called Little Bullock’s Pound in old 
Doctor Ponto’s time. I had a view of the pretty grounds, and 
the stables, and the adjoining village and church, and a great 
park beyond, from the windows of the bedroom whither Ponto 
conducted me. It was the yellow bedroom, the freshest and 
pleasantest of bedchambers ; the air was fragrant with a large 
bouquet that was placed on the writing-table ; the linen was 
fragrant with the lavender in which it had been laid ; the chintz 
hangings of the bed and the big sofa were, if not fragrant with 
flowers, at least painted all over with them ; the pen-wiper on 
the table was the imitation of a double dahlia ; and there was 
, accommodation for my watch in a sunflower on the mantel piece. 
A scarlet-leafed creeper came curling over the windows, 
through which the setting sun was pouring a flood of golden 
light. It was all flowers and freshness. Oh, how unlike those 
black chimney-pots in St. Alban’s Place, London, on which 
these weary eyes are accustomed to look. 

'‘ It must be all happiness here, Ponto,” said I, flinging 
myself down into the snug bergcre, and inhaling such a de- 
licious draught of country air as all the milleflners of Mr. At- 
kinson’s shop cannot impart to any the most expensive pocket- 
handkerchief. 

“ Nice place, isn’t it ? ” said Ponto. “ Quiet and unpre- 
tending. I like everything quiet. You’ve not brought your 
valet with you ? Stripes will arrange your dressing things \ ” 
and that functionary, entering at the same time, proceeded to 
gut my portmanteau, and to lay out the black kerseymeres. 


88 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


‘‘the rich cut velvet Genoa waistcoat/’ the white choker, and 
other polite articles of evening costume, with great gravity and 
despatch. “ A great dinner-party,” thinks I to myself, seeing 
these preparations (and not, perhaps, displeased at the idea 
that some of the best people in the neighborhood were coming 
to see me). “ Hark, there’s the first bell ringing ! ” said Ponto, 
moving away ; and, in fact, a clamorous harbinger of victuals 
began clanging from the stable turret, and announced the 
agreeable fact that dinner would appear in half an hour. “ If 
the dinner is as grand as the dinner-bell,” thought I, “ faith, 
I’m in good quarters ! ” and had leisure, during the half-hours 
interval, not only to advance my own person to the utmost 
polish of elegance which it is capable of receiving, to admire 
the pedigree of the Pontos hanging over the chimney, and the 
Ponto crest and arms emblazoned on the wash-hand basin and 
jug, but to make a thousand reflections on the happiness of a 
country life — upon the innocent friendliness and cordiality of 
rustic intercourse ; and to sigh for an opportunity of retiring, 
like Ponto, to my own fields, to my own vine and fig-tree, with 
a placens uxor in my domus, and a half-score of sweet young 
pledges of affection sporting round iny paternal knee. 

Clang ! At the end of the thirty minutes, dinner-bell num- 
ber two pealed from the adjacent turret. I hastened down 
stairs, expecting to find a score of healthy country folks in the 
drawing-room. There was only one person there ; a tall and 
Roman-nosed lady, glistering over with bugles, in deep mourn- 
ing. She rose, advanced two steps, made a majestic curtsey, 
during which all the bugles in her awful head-dress began to 
twiddle and quiver— and then said, “ Mr. Snob, we are very 
happy to see you at the Evergreens,” and heaved a great sigh. 

This, then, was Mrs. Major Ponto ; to whom making my 
very best bow, I replied, that I was very proud to make her 
acquaintance, as also that of so charming a place as the Ever- 
greens. 

Another sigh. “ We are distantly related, Mr. Snob,’ said 
she, shaking her melancholy head. “ I^oor dear Lord Ruba- 
dub ! ” 

Oh ! ” said I ; not knowing what the deuce Mrs. Major 
Ponto meant. 

“ Major Ponto told me that you were of the Leicestershire 
Snobs : a very old family, and related to Lord Snobbington, 
who married Laura Rubadub, who is a cousin of mine, as was 
her poor dear father, for whom we are mourning. What a 
§^izure ! only sixty-three, and apoplexy quite unknown untiJ 


A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS, 


now in our family ! In life we are in death, Mr. Snob. Does 
Lady Snobbington bear the deprivation well ? ’’ 

“Why, really, ma’am, I — I don’t know,” I replied, more 
and more confused. 

As she was speaking I heard a sort of cloop^ by which well- 
known sound I was aware that somebody was opening a bottle 
of wine, and Ponto entered, in a huge white neck-cloth, and a 
rather shabby black suit. 

“ My lov^,” Mrs. Major Ponto said to her husband, “ we 
were talking of our cousin — poor dear Lord Rubadub. His 
death has placed some of the first families in England in 
mourning. Does Lady Rubadub keep the house in Hill Street, 
do you know ? ” 

I didn’t know, but I said, “ I believe she does,” at a ven- 
ture ; and, looking down to the drawing-room table, saw the 
inevitable, abominable, maniacal, absurd, disgusting “ Peerage.’ 
open on the table, interleaved with annotations, and open at 
the article “ Snobbington.” 

“ Dinner is served,” says Stripes, flinging open the door ; 
and I gave Mrs. Major Ponto my arm. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 

Of the dinner to which we now sat down, I am not going 
to be a severe critic. The mahogany I hold to be inviolable ; 
but this I will say, that I prefer sherry to Marsala when I can 
get it, and the latter was the wine of which I have no doubt I 
hearcj the “cloop ” just before dinner. Nor was it particularly 
good of its kind ; however, Mrs. Major Ponto did not evidently 
know the difference, for she called the liquor Amontillado 
during the whole of the repast, and drank but half a glass of it, 
leaving the rest for the Major and his guest. 

Stripes was in the liver}^ of the Ponto family — a thought 
shabby^ but gorgeous in the extreme — lots of magnificent 
worsted lace, and livery buttons of a very notable size. The 
honest fellow’s hands, I remarked, were very large and black \ 
and a fine odor of the stable was wafted about the room as he 
movqd to and fro in his ministration. I should have preferred 


90 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


a clean maid-servant, but the sensations of Londoners are too 
acute perhaps on these subjects ; and a faithful John, after all, 
is more genteel. 

From the circumstance of the dinner being composed of 
pig’s-head mock-turtle soup, of pig’s ^fry and roast ribs* of pork, 
I am led to imagine that one of Ponto’s black Hampshires had 
been sacrificed a short time previous to my visit. It was an 
excellent and comfortable repast ; only there was rather a same- 
ness in it, certainly. I made a similar remark the next day. 

During the dinner Mrs. Ponto asked me many questions 
regarding the nobility, my relatives. ‘‘ When Lady Angelina 
Skeggs would come out ; and if the countess her mamma ” 
(this was said with much archness and he-he-ing) ‘‘ still wore 
that extraordinary purple hair-dye “ Whether my Lord 
Guttlebury kept, besides his French chef, and an English cor- 
don-bleu for the roasts, an Italian for the confectionery 
“ Who attended at Lady Clapperclaw’s conversazioni ? ’’ and 
“whether Sir John Champignon’s ‘Thursday Mornings’ were 
pleasant.^ ” “ Was it true that Lady Carabas, wanting to pawn 
her diamonds, found that they were paste,. and that the Marquis 
had disposed of them beforehand ? ” “ How was it that Snuffin, 
the great tobacco merchant, broke off the marriage which was 
on the tapis between him and their second daughter ; and was 
it true that a mulatto lady came over from the Havana and 
forbade the match ? ” 

“ Upon my word. Madam,” I had begun, and was going on 
to say that I didn’t know one word about all these matters 
which seemed so to interest Mrs. Major Ponto, when the Major, 
giving me a tread or stamp with, his large foot under the table, 
said — ■ 

“ Come, come, Snob my boy, we are all tiled, you know. 
We kfiow you’re one of the fashionable people about town : we 
saw your name at Lady Clapperclaw’s soirees^ and the Cham- 
pignon breakfasts ; and as for the Rubadubs, of course, as rela- 
tions 

“ Oh, of course, I dine there twice a week,” I said ; and 
then I remembered that my cousin, Humphry Snob, of the 
Middle Temple, is a great frequenter of genteel societies, and 
to have seen his name in the Mornmg Post at the tag-end of 
several party lists. So, taking the hint, I am ashamed to say 
I indulged Mrs. Major Ponto with a deal of information about 
the first families in England, such as would astonish those 
great personages if they knew it. I described to her most 
accurately the three reigning beauties of last season at AI- 


A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS, . 9I 

mack’s : told her in confidence that his Grace the D of 

W was going to be married the day after his Statue was put 

up ; that his Grace the D of D was also about to lead 

the fourth daughter of the Archduke Stephen to the hymeneal 
altar : — and talked to her, in a word, just in the style of Mrs. 
Gore’s last fashionable novel. 

Mrs. Major was quite fascinated by this brilliant conver- 
sation. She began to trot out scraps of French, just for all 
the world as they do in the novels ; and kissed her hand to me 
quite graciously, telling me to come soon to caffy, ung pii de 
MusiUz 0 salong — with which she tripped off like an elderly 
fairy. 

“ Shall I open a bottle of port, or do you ever drink such a 
thing as Hollands and water 1 ” says Ponto, looking ruefully at 
me. This was a very different style of thing to what I had 
been led to expect from him at our smoking-room at the Club \ 
where he swaggers about his horses and his cellar : and slap- 
ping me on the shoulder used to say, “ Come down to Mangeh 
wurzelshire. Snob my boy, and I’ll give you as good a day’s 
shooting and as good a glass of claret as any in the county.” — 
^^Well,” I said, ‘‘I liked Hollands much better than port, and 
gin even better than Hollands.” This was lucky. It was gin ; 
and Stripes brought in hot water on a splendid plated tray. 

The jingling of a harp and piano soon announced that Mrs. 
Ponto’s U7ig pu de Micsick had commenced, and the smell of the 
stable again entering the dining-room, in the person of Stripes, 
summoned us to caffy and the little concert. She beckoned me 
with a winning smile to the sofa, on which she made room for 
me, and where we could command a fine view of the backs, of 
the young ladies who were performing the musical entertain- 
ment. Very broad backs they were too, strictly according to 
the present mode, for crinoline or its substitutes is not an 
expensive luxury, and young people in the country can afford 
to be in the fashion at very trifling charges. Miss Emily Ponto 
at the piano, and her sister Maria at that somewhat exploded 
instrument, the harp, were in light-blue dresses that looked all 
flounce, and spread out like Mr. Green’s balloon when inflated. 

‘‘ Brilliant touch Emily has — what a fine arm Maria’s is,” 
Mrs. Ponto remarked good-naturedly, pointing out the merits 
of her daughters, and waving her own arm in such a way as to 
show that she was not a little satisfied with the beauty of that 
member. I observed she had about nine bracelets and bangles, 
consisting of chains and padlocks, the Major’s miniature, and 
a variety of brass serpents with fiery ruby or tender turquoise 


92 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


eyes, writhing up to her elbow almost, in the most profuse con- 
tortions. 

‘‘ You recognize those polkas ? They were played at Dev- 
onshire House on the 23d of July, the day of the grand 
fete.^’ So I said yes — I knew ^em quite intimately ; and began 
wagging my head as if in acknowledgement of those old friends. 

When the performance was concluded, I had the felicity of 
a presentation and conversation with the two tall and scraggy 
Miss Pontos ; and Miss Wirt, the governess, sat down to en- 
tertain us with variations on “ Sich a gettin^ up Stairs.’^ They 
were determined to be in the fashion. 

For the performance of the ^‘Gettin’ up Stairs,’’ I have- 
no other name but that it was a stunner. First Miss Wirt, 
with great deliberation, played the original and beautiful melody, 
cutting it, as it were, out of the instrument, and firing off each 
note so loud, clear, and sharp, that I am sure Stripes must have 
heard it in the stable. 

What a finger ! ” says Mrs. Ponto ; and indeed it was a 
a finger, as knotted as a turkey’s drumstick, and splaying all 
over the piano. When she had banged out the tune slowly, she 
began a different manner of Gettin’ up Stairs,” and did so 
with a fury and swiftness quite incredible. She spun up stairs \ 
she whirled up stairs ; she galloped up stairs ; she rattled up 
stairs ; and then having got the tune to the top landing, as it 
were, she hurled it down again shrieking to the bottom floor, 
where it sank in a crash as if exhausted by the breathless ra- 
pidity of the descent. The Miss Wirt played the “ Gettin’ up 
Stairs ” with the most pathetic and ravishing solemnity : plain- 
tive moans and sobs issued from the keys — you wept and 
trembled as you were gettin’ up stairs. Miss Wirt’s hands 
seemed to faint and wail and die in variations : again, and she 
went up with a savage clang and rush of trumpets, as if Miss 
Wirt was storming a breach ; and although I knew nothing of 
music, as I sat and listened with my mouth open to this wonder- 
ful display, my caffy grew cold, and I wondered the windows 
did not crack and the chandelier start out of the beam at the 
sound of this earthquake of a piece of music. 

“Glorious^ creature! Isn’t she ” said Mrs. Ponto. 
“ Squirtz’s favorite pupil — inestimable to have such a creature. 
Lady Carabas would give her eyes for her 1 A prodigy of 
accomplishments 1 Thank you. Miss Wirt I ” — and the young 
ladies gave a heave and a gasp of admiration — a deep-breath- 
ing gushing sound, such as you hear at church when the sermon 
comes to a full stop. 


OAT SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 


93 


Miss Wirt put her two great double-knuckled hands round 
a waist of her two pupils, and said, “ My dear children, I hope 
you will be able to play it soon as well as your poor little gover- 
ness. When I lived with the Dunsinanes, it was the dear 
Duchess’s favorite, and Lady Barbara and Lady Jane McBeth 
learned it. It was while hearing Jane play that, I remember, 
that dear Lord Castletoddy first fell in love with her ; and 
though he is but an Irish Peer, with not more than fifteen 
thousand a year, I persuaded Jane to have him. Do you know 
Castletoddy, Mr. Snob ? — round towers — sweet place — County 
Mayo. Old Lord Castletoddy (the present Lord was then Lord 
Inishowan) was a most eccentric old man — they say he was mad. 
I heard his Royal Highness the poor dear Duke of Sussex — 
{such a man, my dears, but alas ! addicted to smoking !) — I 
heard His Royal Highness say to the Marquis of Anglesea, ‘ I 
am sure Castletoddy is mad ! ’ but Inishowan wasn’t in marry- 
ing my sweet Jane, though the dear child had but ten thousand 
pounds pour tout potage ! ” 

Most invaluable person,” whispered Mrs. Major Ponto to 
me. Has lived in the very highest society : ” and I, who 
have been accustomed to see governesses bullied in the world, 
was delighted to find this one ruling the roast, and to think 
that even the majestic Mrs. Ponto bent before her. 

As for my pipe, so to speak, it went out at once. I hadn’t 
a word to say against a woman who was intimate with every 
Duchess in the Red Book. She wasn’t the rosebud, but she 
had been near it. She had rubbed shoulders with the great, 
and about these we talked all the evening incessantly, and 
about the fashions, and about the Court, until bedtime came. 

“ And are there Snobs in this Elysium ? ” I exclaimed, 
jumping into the lavender-perfumed bed. Ponto’s snoring 
boomed from the neighboring bedroom in reply. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 

Something like a journal of the proceedings of the Ever- 
greens may be interesting to those foreign readers of Punch 
who want to know the customs of an English gentleman’s 


94 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


family and household. There’s plenty of time to k^ep the 
Journal. Piano-strumming begins at six o’clock in the morn- 
ing ; it lasts till breakfast, with but a minute’s intermission, 
when the instrument changes hands, and Miss Emily practises 
in place of her sister Miss Maria. 

In fact, the confounded instrument never stops : when the 
young ladies are at their lessons. Miss Wirt hammers away at 
those stunning variations, and keeps her magnificent finger in 
exercise. 

I asked this great creature in what other branches of edu- 
cation she instructed her pupils ? “ The modern languages,” 

says she modestly : ‘‘ French, German, Spanish, and Italian, 
Latin and the rudiments of Greek if desired. English of 
course ; the practice of Elocution, Geography, and Astronomy, 
and the Use of the Globes, Algebra (but only as far as quad- 
ratic equations) ; for a poor ignorant female, you know, Mr. 
Snob, cannot be expected to know everything. Ancient and 
Modern History no young woman can be without ; and of these 
I make my beloved pupils perfect mistresses. Botany, Geology, 
and Mineralogy, I consider as amusements. And with these 
I assure you we manage to pass the days at the Evergreens not 
unpleasantly.” 

Only these, thought I — what an education ! But I looked 
in one of Miss Ponto’s manuscript song-books and found five 
faults of French in four words : and in a waggish mood asking 
Miss Wirt whether Dante Algiery was so called because he 
was born at Algiers, received a smiling answer in the affirma- 
tive, which made me rather doubt about the accuracy of Miss 
Wirt’s knowledge. 

When the above little morning occupations are concluded, 
these unfortunate young women perform what they call Calis- 
thenic Exercises in the garden. I saw them to-day, without 
any crinoline, pulling the garden-roller. 

Dear Mrs. Ponto was in the garden too, and as limp as her 
daughters ; in a faded bandeau of hair, in a battered bonnet, 
in a holland pinafore, in pattens, on a broken chair, snipping 
leaves off a vine. Mrs. Ponto measures many yards about in 
an evening. Ye heavens ! what a guy she is in that skeleton 
morning costume ! 

Besides Stripes, they keep a boy called Thomas or Tum- 
mus. Tummus works in the garden or about the pigsty and 
stable ; Thomas wears a page’s costume of eruptive buttons. 


OJ^ SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 


95 


hen anybody calls, and Stripes is out of the way, Tum- 
mas flings himself like mad into Thomas’s clothes, and comes 
out metamorphosed like Harlequin in the pantomime. To-day, 
as Mrs. P. was cutting the grape-vine, as the young ladies were 
at the roller, down comes Tummus like a roaring whirlwind, 
with “ Missus, Missus, there’s company coomin’ ! ” Away 
skurry the young ladies from the roller, down comes Mjs. P. 
from the old chair, off flics Tummus to change his clothes, and 
in an incredibly short space of time Sir John Hawbuck, my 
Lady Hawbuck, and Master Hugh Hawbuck are introduced 
into the garden with brazen effrontery by Thomas, who says, 
“ Please Sir Jan and my Lady to walk this year way : I know 
Missus is in the rose-garden.” 

And there, sure enough, she was ! 

In a pretty little garden bonnet, with beautiful curling ring- 
lets, with the smartest of aprons and the freshest of pearl- 
colored gloves, this amazing woman was in the arms of her 
dearest Lady Hawbuck. “ Dearest Lady Hawbuck, how good 
of you ! Always among my flowers ! can’t live away from 
them ! ” 

‘‘Sweets to the sweet! hum — a-ha — haw!” says Sir John 
Hawbuck, who piques himself on his gallantry, and says noth- 
ing without “ a-hum — a-ha — a-haw ! ” 

“ Whereth yaw pinnafaw ? ” cries Master Hugh. “ We thaw 
you in it, over the wall, didn’t we. Pa ? ” 

“Hum — a-ha — a-haw!” burst out Sir John, dreadfully 
alarmed. “Where’s Ponto? Why wasn’t he at Quarter Ses- 
sions ? How are his birds this year, Mrs. Ponto — have those 
Carabas pheasants done any harm to your wheat ? a-hum — a- 
ha — a-haw ! ” and all this while he was making the most fero- 
cious and desperate signals to his youthful heir. 

“ Well, she 7vath in her pinnafaw, wathn’t’ she, Ma ? ” says 
Hugh, quite unabashed ; which question Lady Hawbuck turned 
away with a sudden query regarding her dear darling daugh- 
ters, nnd the enfant terrible was removed by his father. 

“ I hope you weren’t disturbed by the music ? ”, Ponto says. 
“ My girls, you know, practise four hours a day, you know — • 
must do it, you know — absolutely necessary. As for me, you 
know I’m an early man, and in my farm every morning at five 
— no, no laziness for meE 

The facts are these. Ponto goes to sleep directly after din- 
ner on entering the drawing-room, and wakes up when the 
ladies leave off practice at ten. From seven till ten, and from 


96 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


ten till five, is a very fair allowance of slumber for a man who 
says he’s not a lazy man. It is my private opinion that when 
Ponto retires to what is called his Study,” he sleeps too. 
He locks himself up there daily two hours with the news- 
paper. 

I saw the Hawbuck scene out of the Study, which commands 
the garden. It’s a curious object, that Study. Ponto’s library 
mostly consists of boots. He and Stripes have important in- 
terviews here of mornings, when the potatoes are discussed, or 
the fate of the calf ordained, or sentence passed on the pig, &c. 
All the Major’s bills are docketed on the Study tables and dis- 
played like lawyer’s briefs. Here, too, lie displayed his hooks, 
knives, and other gardening irons, his whistles, and strings of 
spare buttons. He has a drawer of endless brown paper for 
parcels, and another containing a prodigious and never-failing 
supply of string. What a man can want with so many gig- 
whips I can never conceive. These, and fishing-rods, and 
landing-nets, and spurs, and boot-trees, and balls for horses, 
and surgical implements for the same, and favorite pots of 
shiny blacking, with which he paints his own shoes in the most 
elegant manner, and buckskin gloves stretched out on their 
trees, and his gorget, sash, and sabre of the Horse Marines, 
with his boot-hooks underneath in a trophy ; and the family 
medicine-chest, and in a corner the very rod with which he used 
to whip his son, Wellesley Ponto, when a boy (Wellesley never 
entered the “ Study ” but for that awful purpose) — all these, 
with “ Mogg’s Road Book,” the Gardeners* Chronicle^ and a 
backgammon-board, form the Major’s library. Under the 
trophy there’s a picture of Mrs. Ponto, in a light-blue dress 
and train, and no waist, when she was first married ; a fox’s 
brush lies over the frame, and serves to keep the dust off that 
work of art. 

My library’s small,” says Ponto, with the most amazing 
impudence, but well selected, my boy — well selected. I have 
been reading the ‘ History of England ’ all the morning.” 


A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS 


97 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 

We had the fish, which, as the kind reader may remember, 
I had brought down in a delicate attention to Mrs. Ponto to 
variegate the repast of next day \ and cod and oyster-sauce, 
twice laid, salt cod and scolloped oysters, formed parts of the 
bill of fare until I began to fancy that the Ponto family, like 
our late revered monarch George II., had a fancy for stale fish. 
And about this time, the pig being consumed, we began upon 
a sheep. 

But how shall I forget the solemn splendor of a second 
course, which was served up in great state by Stripes in a silver 
dish and cover, a napkin twisted round his dirty thumbs ; and 
consisted of a landrail, not much bigger than a corpulent 
sparrow. 

“ My love, will you take any game ? says Ponto, with pro- 
digious gravity ; and stuck his fork into that little mouthful of 
an island in the silver sea. Stripes, too, at intervals, dribbled 
out the Marsala with a solemnity which would have done honor 
to a Duke’s butler. The Barmecide’s dinner to Shacabac was 
only one degree removed from these solemn banquets. 

As there were plenty of pretty country places close by ; a 
comfortable country town, with good houses of gentlefolks ; a 
beautiful old parsonage, close to the church whither we went 
(and where the Carabas family have their ancestral carved and 
monumented Gothic pew), and every appearance of good 
society in the neighborhood, I rather wondered we were not 
enlivened by the appearance of some of the neighbors at the 
Evergreens, and asked about them. 

‘‘ We can’t in our position of life — we can’t well associate 
with the attorney’s family, as I leave you to suppose,” said Mrs. 
Ponto, confidentially. “ Of course not,” I answered, though I 
didn’t know why. “ And the Doctor ? ” said I. 

A most excellent worthy creature,” says Mrs. P. j “ saved 
Maria’s life — really a learned man ; but what can one do in 
one’s position ? One may ask one’s medical man to one’s table 
certainly : but his family, my dear Mrs. Snob ! ” 

“Half a dozen little gallipots,” interjDOsed Miss Wirt, the 

7 


THE BOOK OF SHOES. 


98 

governess : “ he, he, he ! ’’ and the young ladies laughed in 
chorus. 

“ We only live with the county families,” Miss Wirt* con- 
tinued, tossing up her head. “ The Duke is abroad : we are at 
feud with the Carabases ; the Ringwoods don’t come down till 
Christmas : in fact, nobody’s here till the hunting season — pos- 
itively nobody.” 

*■ I have since heard that this aristocratic lady’s father was a livery-button maker in St. 
Martin’s Lane : where he met with misfortunes, and his daughter acquired her taste for 
heraldry. But it may be told to her credit, that out of her earnings she has kept the bed- 
ridden old bankrupt in great comfort and secresy at Pentonville ; and furnished her 
brother’s outfit for the Cadetship which her patron, Lord Swigglebiggle, gave her when he 
was at the Board of Control. I have this information from a friend. To hear Miss Wirt 
herself, you would fancy that her Papa was a Rothschild, and that the markets of Europe 
were convulsed when he went into the Gazette, 

“ Whose is the large red house just outside of the town ? ” 
What ! the chdteau-calicot ? he, he, he ! That purse-proud 
ex-Iinendraper, Mr. Yardley, with the yellow liveries, and the 
wife in red velvet ? How can you, my dear Mr. Snob, be so 
satirical The impertinence of those people is really some- 
thing quite overwhelming.” 

“ Well, then, there is the parson. Doctor Chrysostom. He’s 
a gentleman, at any rate.” 

At this Mrs. Ponto looked at Miss Wirt. After their eyes had 
met and they had wagged their heads at each other, they looked 
up to the ceiling. So did the young ladies. They thrilled. It 
was evident I had said something very terrible. Another black 
sheep in the Church ? thought I, with a little sorrow ; for I 
don’t care to own that I have a respect for the cloth. ‘‘ I — I 
hope there’s nothing wrong ? ” 

‘‘Wrong ? ” says Mrs. P., clasping her hands with a tragic 
air. 

“ Oh ! ” says Miss Wirt, and the two girls, gasping in chorus. 

“ Well,” says I, “ I’m very sorry for it. I never saw a 
nicer-looking old gentleman, or a better school, or heard a bet- 
ter sermon.” 

“ He used to preach those sermons in a surplice,” hissed 
out Mrs. Ponto. “ He’s a Pu^^yite, Mr. Snob.” 

“ Heavenly powers ! ” sayi. I, admiring the pure ardor of 
these female theologians ; and Stripes came in with the tea. 
It’s so weak that no wonder Ponto’s sleep isn’t disturbed by it. 

Of mornings we used to go out shooting. We had Ponto’s 
own fields to sport over (where we got the fieldfare), and the 
non-preserved part of the Hawbuck property ; and one evening 


ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS, 


99 


in a stubble of Pontons skirting the Carabas woods, we got 
among some pheasants, and had some real sport. I shot a hen, 
I know, greatly to* my delight. “ Bag it,^’ says Ponto, in rather 
a hurried manner : ‘‘ here’s somebody coming.” So I pocketed 
the bird. 

“ You infernal poaching thieves ! ” roars out a man from the 
hedge in the garb of a gamekeeper. ‘‘ I wish I could catch 
you on this side of the hedge. I’d put a brace of barrels into 
you, that I would.” 

“ Curse that Snapper,” says Ponto, moving off ; “ he’s 
always watching me like a spy.” 

‘‘ Carry off the birds, you sneaks, and sell ’em in London,” 
roars the individual, who it appears was a keeper of Lord Car- 
abas. “ You’ll get six shillings a brace for ’em.” 

You know the price of ’em well enough, and so does your 
master too, you scoundrel,” says Ponto, still retreating. 

‘‘We kills ’em on our ground,” cries Mr. Snapper. “ We 
don’t set traps for other people’s birds. We’re no decoy ducks. 
We’re no sneaking poachers. We don’t shoot ’ens, like that 
’ere Cockney, who’s got the tail of one a-sticking out of his 
pocket. Only just come across the hedge, that’s all.” 

“ I tell you what,” says Stripes, who was out with us as 
keeper this day, (in fact he’s keeper, coachman, gardener, valet, 
and bailiff, with Tummas under him,) ^‘liyouTl come across, 
John Snapper, and take your coat off. I’ll give you such a whop- 
ping as you’ve never had since the last time I did it at Guttle- 
bury Fair.” 

“ Whop one of your own weight,” Mr. Snapper said, whist- 
ling his dogs, and disappearing into the wood. And so we 
came out of this controversy rather victoriously ; but I began to 
alter my preconceived ideas of rural felicity^ 


CHAPTER XXVIIL 

ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS, 

Be hanged to your aristocrats ! ” Ponto said, in some con- 
versation we had regarding the family at Carabas, between 
whom and the Evergreens there was a feud. “ When I first 
came into the county — it was the year before Sir John Bufi 


lOO 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


contested in the Blue interest — the Marquis, then Lord St. 
Michaels, who, of course, was Orange to the core, paid me and 
Mrs. Ponto such attentions, that I fairly ccmfess I was taken 
in by the old humbug, and thought that I’d met with a rare 
neighbor. 'Gad, sir, we used to get pines from Carabas. and 
pheasants from Carabas, and it was — ‘ Ponto, when will you 
come over and shoot ? ' — and — ‘ Ponto, our pheasants want 
thinning,' — and my Lady would insist upon her dear Mrs. 
Ponto coming over to Carabas to sleep, and put me I don’t 
know to what expense for turbans and velvet gowns for my 
wife's toilette. Well, Sir, the election takes place, and though 
I was always a Liberal, personal friendship of course induces 
me to plump for St. Michaels, who comes in at the head of the 
poll. Next year, Mrs. P. insists upon going to town — with 
lodgings in Clarges Street at ten pounds a week, with a hired 
brougham, and new dresses for herself and the girls, and the 
deuce and all to pay. Our first cards were to Carabas House ; 
my Lady’s are returned by a great big flunkey : and I leave 
you to fancy my poor Betsy’s discomfiture as the lodging-house 
maid took in the cards, and Lady St. Michaels drives away, 
though she actually saw us at the drawing-room window. 
Would you believe it. Sir, that though we called four times 
afterwards, those infernal aristocrats never returned our visit \ 
that though Lady St. Michaels gave nine dinner-parties and 
four deje{mers that season, she never asked us to one ; and that 
she cut us dead at the Opera, though Betsy was nodding to her 
the whole night ? We wrote to her for tickets for Almack's ; 
she writes to say that all hers were promised ; and said, in the 
presence of Wiggins, her lady’s-maid, who told it to Diggs, my 
wife's woman, that she couldn’t conceive how people in our 
station of life could so far forget themselves as to wish to ap- 
pear in any such place ! Go to Castle Carabas ! I’d sooner 
die than set my foot in the house of that impertinent, insolvent, 
insolent jackanapes — and I hold him in scorn ! " After this, 
Ponto gave me some private information regarding Lord Car- 
abas's pecuniary affairs ; how he owed money all over the coun- 
try ; how Jukes the carpenter was utterly ruined and couldn’t 
get a shilling of his bill ; how Biggs the butcher hanged himself 
for the same reason ; how the six big footmen never received a 
guinea of wages, and Snaffle, the state coachman, actually took 
off his blown-glass wig of ceremony and flung it at Lady Cara- 
bas’s feet on the terrace before the Castle ; all which stories, as 
they are private, I do not think proper to divulge. But these 
details did not stifle my desire to see the famous mansion of 


ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 


lOl 


Castle Carabas, nay, possibly excited my interest to know more 
i about that lordly house and its owners. 

At the entrance of the park, there are a pair of great gaunt 
mildewed lodges — mouldy Doric temples with black chimney- 
pots, in the finest classic taste, and the gates of course are sur- 
mounted by the chats the well-known supporters of the 

Carabas family. “Give the lodge-keeper a shilling,^’ says 
Ponto (who drove me near to it in his four-wheeled cruelty- 
chase). “ I warrant it's the first piece of ready-money he has 
received for some time.” I don’t know whether there was any 
foundation for this sneer, but the gratuity was received with a 
curtsey, and the gate opened for me to enter. “ Poor old por- 
teress I ” says I, inwardly. “ You little know that it is the His- 
torian of Snofes whom you let in ! ” The gates were passed. 
A damp green stretch of park spread right and left immeasur- 
ably, confined by a chilly gray wall, and a damp long straight 
road between two huge rows of moist, dismal lime-trees, leads 
up to the Castle. In the midst of the park is a great black 
tank or lake, bristling over with rushes, and here and there 
covered over with patches of pea-soup. A shabby temple rises, 
on an island in this delectable lake, which is approached by a 
rotten barge that lies at roost in a dilapidated boat-house. 
Clumps of elms and oaks dot over the huge green flat. Every 
one of them Avould have been down long since, but that the 
Marquis is not allowed to cut the timber. 

Up that long avenue the Snobographer walked in solitude. 
At the seventy-ninth tree on the left-hand side, the insolvent 
butcher hanged himself. I scarcely wondered at the dismal 
deed, so awful and sad were the impressions connected with the 
place. So, for a mile and a half I walked — alone and thinking 
of death. 

I forgot to say the house is in full view all the way — except 
when intercepted by. the trees on the miserable island in the 
laker— an enormous red-brick mansion, square, vast, and dingy. 
It is flanked by four stone towers with weathercocks. In the 
midst of the grand fagade is a huge Ionic portico, approached 
by a vast, lonely, ghastly staircase. Rows of black windows, 
framed in stone, stretch on either side, right and left — three 
storeys and eighteen windows of a row. You may see a picture 
of the palace’ and staircase, in the “Views of England and 
Wales,” with four carved and gilt carnages waiting at the gravel 
walk, and several parties of ladies and gentlemen in wigs and 
hoops, dotting the fatiguing lines of the stairs. 


102 


'I HE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


But these stairs are made in great houses for people not to 
ascend. The first Lady Carabas (they are but eighty years in 
the peerage), if she got out of her gilt coach in a shower, would 
be wet to the skin before she got half-way to the carved Ionic 
portico, where four dreary statues of Peace, Plenty, Piety and 
Patriotism, are the only sentinels. You enter these Palaces by 
back doors. “ That was the way the Carabases got their peer- 
age,’^ the misanthropic Ponto said after dinner. 

Well — I rang the bell at a little low side door ; it clanged and 
jingled and echoed for a long, long while, till at length a face, 
as of a housekeeper, peered through the door, and, as she saw 
my hand in my waistcoat pocket, opened it. Unhappy, lonely, 
housekeeper, I thought. Is Miss Cnasoe in her island more 
solitary? The door clapped to, and I was in Castle Carabas. 

The side entrance and All,’’ says the housekeeper. ‘‘ The 
halligator hover the mantel piece was brought home by Hadmiral 
St. Michaels, when a Capting with Lord Hanson. The harms 
on the cheers is the harms of the Carabas family.” The hall 
was rather comfortable. We went clapping up a clean stone 
backstair, and then into a back passage cheerfully decorated 
with ragged light-green Kidderminster, and issued upon 

“the great all. 

“ The great all is seventy-two feet in length, fifty-six in 
breath, and thirty-eight feet ’igh. The carvings of the chimlies, 
representing the buthof Venus, and Ercules, and Eyelash, is by 
Van Chislum, the most famous sculpture of his hage and country. 
The ceiling, by Calimanco, represents Painting, Harchitecture 
and Music (the naked female figure with the barrel horgan) in- 
troducing George, fust Lord Carabas, to the Temple of the 
Muses. The winder ornaments is by Vanderputty. The floor 
is Patagonian marble ; and the chandelier in the centre was 
presented to Lionel, second Marquis, by Lewy the Sixteenth, 
whose ’ead was cut hoff in the French Revelation. We now 
henter 


“the south gallery. 

“ One ^undred and forty-eight in length by thirty-t^^o in 
breath ; it is profusely hornaminted by the choicest works of 
Hart. Sir Andrew Katz, founder of the Carabas family and 
banker of the Prince of Horange, Kneller. Her present Lady- 
ship, by Lawrence. Lord St. Michaels, by the same — he is rep- 


OM SOME COUNTkV SNOBS. 


103 

resented sittin’ on a rock in velvit pantaloons. Moses in the 
bullrushes — the bull very fine, by Paul Potter. The toilet of 
Venus, Fantaski. Flemish Bores drinking. Van Ginnums. 
Jupiter and Europia, de Horn. The Grandjunction Canal, 
Venis, by Candleetty ; and Italian Bandix, by Slavata Rosa.” — 
And so this worthy woman went on, from one room into an- 
other, from the blue room to the green, and the green to the 
grand saloon, and the grand saloon to the tapestry closet, 
cackling her list of pictures and wonders : and furtively turning 
up a corner of brown holland to show the color of the old, 
faded, seedy, mouldy, dismal hangings. 

At last we came to her Ladyship’s bedroom. In the centre 
of this dreary apartment there is a bed about the size of one of 
those whizgig temples in which the Genius appears in a panto- 
mime. The huge gilt edifice is approached by steps, and so 
tall,. that it might be let off in floors, for sleeping-rooms for all 
the Carabas family. An awful bed ! A murder might be done 
at one end of that bed, and people sleeping at the other end be 
ignorant of it. Gracious powers ! fancy little Lord Carabas in 
a nightcap ascending those steps after putting out the candle ! 

The sight of that seedy and solitary .splendor was too much 
for me. I should go mad were I that lonely housekeeper — in 
those enormous galleries — in that lonely library, filled up with 
ghastly folios that nobody dares read, with an inkstand on the 
centre table like the coffin of a baby, and sad portraits staring 
at you from the bleak walls with their solemn mouldy eyes. 
No wonder that Carabas does not come down here often. It 
would require two thousand footmen to make the place cheer- 
ful. No wonder the coachman resigned his wig, that the mas- 
ters are insolvent, and the servants perish in this huge dreary 
out-at-elbow place. 

A single family has no more right to build itself a temple of 
that sort than to erect a tower of Babel. Such a habitation is 
not decent for a mere mortal man. But, after all, I suppose 
poor Carabas had no choice. Fate put him there as it sent 
Napoleon to St. Helena. Suppose it had been decreed by Na- 
ture that you and I should be Marquises t We wouldn’t refuse, 
I suppose, but take Castle Carabas and all, with debts, duns, 
and mean makeshifts, and shabby pride, and swindling mag- 
nificence. 

Next season, when I read of Lady Carabas’s splendid en- 
tertainments in the Morning Post., and see the poor old insol- 
vent cantering through the Park — I shall have a much tenderer 
interest in these great people than I have had heretoforec 


104 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


Poor old shabby Snob ! Ride on and fancy the world is still 
on its knees before the house of Carabas ! Give yourself airs, 
poor old bankrupt Magnifico, who are under money-obligations 
to your flunkeys ; and must stoop so as to swindle poor trades- 
men ! And for us, O my brother Snobs, oughtn’t we to feel 
happy if our walk through life is more even, and that we are 
out of the reach of that surprising arrogance and that as- 
tounding meanness to which this wretched old victim is obliged 
to mount and descend. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 

Notable as my reception had been (under that unfortunate 
mistake of Mrs. Ponto that I was related to Lord Snobbington, 
which I was not permitted to correct), it was nothing compared 
to the bowing and kotooting, the ruptures and flurry which pre- 
ceded and welcomed the visit of a real live lord and lord’s 
son, a brother officer of Cornet Wellesley Ponto, 120th 
Hussars, who came over with the young Cornet from Guttle- 
bury, where their distinguished regiment was quartered. This 
was my Lord Gules, Lord Saltire’s grandson and heir : a very 
young, short, sandy-haired and tobacco-smoking nobleman, who 
cannot have left the nursery very long, and who, though he 
accepted the honest Major’s invitation to the Evergreens in a 
letter written in a school-boy handwriting, with a number of 
faults in spelling, may yet be a very fine classical scholar for 
what I know : having had his education at Eton, where he and 
young Ponto was inseparable. 

At any rate, if he can’t write, he has mastered a number of 
other accomplishments wonderful for one of his age and size. 
He is one of the best shots and riders in England. He rode 
his horse Abracadabra, and won the famous Guttlebury steeple- 
chase. He has horses entered at half the races in the country 
(under other people’s names \ for the old lord is a strict hand, 
and will not hear of betting or gambling). He has lost and 
won such sums of money as my Lord George himself might be 
proud of. He knows all the stables, and all the jockeys, and 
has all the ^‘information,” and is a match for the best Leg at 


A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 165 

; Newmarket. Nobody was ever known to be “ too much ’’ for 
him : at play or in the stable. 

Although his grandfather makes him a moderate allowance, 
by the aid of post-obits and convenient friends he can live in a 
splendor becoming his rank. He has not distinguished him- 
self in the knocking down of policemen much ; he is not big 
enough for that. But, as a light-weight, his skill is of the very 
highest order. At billiards he is said to be first-rate. He 
drinks and smokes as much as any two of the biggest officers, 
in his regiment. With such high talents, who can say how far 
he may not go ? He may take to politics as a delassement., and 
be Prime Minister after Lord George Bentinck. 

My young friend Wellesley Ponto is a gaunt and bony 
youth, with a pale face profusely blotched. From his contin- 
ually pulling something on his chin, I am led to fancy that he 
believes he has what is called an Imperial growing there. That 
is not the only tuft that is hunted in the family, by the way. 
He can’t, of course, indulge in those expensive amusements 
which render his aristocratic comrade so respected : he bets 
pretty freely when he is in cash, and rides when somebody 
mounts him (for he can’t afford more than his regulation 
chargers). At drinking he is by no means inferior ; and why 
do you think he brought his noble friend. Lord Gules, to the 
Evergreens ? — Why ? because he intended to ask his mother 
to order his father to pay his debts, which she couldn’t refuse 
before such an exalted presence. Young Ponto gave me all 
this information with the most engaging frankness. We are 
old friends. I used to tip him when he was at school. 

“ Gad ! ” says he, “ our wedgment’s so doothid exthpenthif. 
Must hunt, you know. A man couldn’t live in the wedgment 
if he didn’t. Mess expense enawmuth. Must dine at mess. 
Must drink champagne and claret. Ours ain’t a port and 
sherry light-infantry mess. Uniform’s awful. Fitzstultz, our 
Colonel, will have ’em so. Must be a distinction you know. 
At his own expense Fitzstultz altered the plumes in the men’s 
caps,, you called them shaving-brushes. Snob my boy : most 
absurd and unjust that attack of yours, by the way ; that alte- 
wation alone cotht him five hundred pound. The year befaw 
iatht he horthed the wegiment at an immenthe expenthe, and 
we’re called the Queen’th Own Pyebalds from that day. Ever 
rheen uth on pawade ? The Empewar Nicolath burtht into 
tearth of envy when he thaw uth at Windthor. And you see,” 
continued my young friend, “ I brought Gules down with me, 
as the Governor is very sulky about shelling out, just to talk 


io6 


TH^ BOOJC OF SATOBS, 


my mother over, who can do anything with him. Gules told 
her that I was Fitzstultz’s favorite of the whole regiment ; and, 
Gad ! she thinks the Horse Guards will give me my troop for 
nothing, and he humbugged the Governor that I was the 
greatest screw in the army. Ain’t it a good dodge ? 

With this Wellesley left me to go and smoke a cigar in the 
stables with Lord Gules, and make merry over the cattle there, 
under Stripes’s superintendence. Young Ponto laughed with 
his friend, at the venerable four-wheeled cruelty-chaise ; but 
seemed amazed that the latter should ridicule still more an 
ancient chariot of the build of 1824, emblazoned immensely 
with the arms of the Pontos and the Snaileys, from which latter 
distinguished family Mrs. Ponto issued. 

I found poor Pon in his study among his boots, in such a 
rueful attitude of despondency, that I could not but remark it. 
‘‘ Look at that ! ” says the poor fellow, handing me over a 
document. ‘‘ It’s the second change in uniform since he’s been 
in the army, and yet there’s no extravagance about the lad. 
Lord Gules tells me he is. the most careful youngster in the 
regiment, God bless him ! But look at that ! by heaven. Snob, 
look at that and say how can a man of nine hundred keep out 
of the Bench ? He gave a sob as he handed me the paper 
across the table ; and his old face, and his old corduroys, and 
his shrunk shooting-jacket, and his lean shanks, looked, as he 
spoke, more miserably haggard, bankrupt, and threadbare. 


Lietti. Wellesley Ponto, xxoth Qtieen s Own Pyebald Hussars, 

To Kyiojyf and Stecknadel, 

Conduit Street, London. 


£ s. d. 

Dress Jacket, richly laced with gold 35 00 
Ditto Pelisse ditto, and trimmed 
with sable . . . . . 60 o o 

Undress Jacket, trimmed with gold 15 15 o 
Ditto Pelisse . . . . 30 o o 

Dress Pantaloons . . . .1200 

Ditto Overalls, gold lace on sides .660 
Undress ditto ditto . . • 5 5 o 

Blue Braided Frock . . . 14 14 o 

Forage Cap 3 3 o 

Dress Cap, gold lines, plume and 
chain , , , . . 25 o o 


£2 o-j 3 o 


£ s. d. 

Brought forward 207 3 o 


Gold Barrelled Sash 

.1118 

0 

Sword 

. 11 11 

0 

Ditto Belt and Sabretache 

. 16 16 

0 

Pouch and Belt 

. 15 15 

0 

Sword Knot 

. I 4 

0 

Cloak 

• 13 13 

0 

Valise 

• 3 13 

6 

Regulation Saddle 

. 7 17 

6 

Ditto Bridle, complete • 

. 10 10 

0 

A Dress Housing, complete . 

. 30 0 

0 

A pair of Pistols 

. 10 10 

0 

A Black Sheepskin, edged 

. 6 18 

0 


Carried forward £ za 7 9 ^ 


That evening Mrs. Ponto and her family made their darling 
Wellesley give a full, true and particular account of everything 
that had taken place at Lord Fitzstultz’s ; how many servants 
waited at dinner ; and how the ladies Schneider dressed ; and 
what his Royal Highness said when he came down to shoot; 


ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 


107 


and who was there? ^‘What a blessing that boy is to me ! ” 
said she, as my pimple-faced young friend moved off to resume 
smoking operations with Gules in the now vacant kitchen ; — 
and poor Pontons dreary and desperate look, shall I ever for- 
get that ? 

O you parents and guardians ! O you men and women of 
sense in England! O you legislators about to assemble in- 
Parliament 1 read over that tailor’s bill above jDrinted — read 
over that absurd catalogue of insane gimcracks and madman’s 
tomfoolery — and say how are you ever to get rid of Snobbish- 
ness when society does so much for its education ? 

Three hundred and forty pounds for a young chap’s saddle' 
and breeches I Before George, I would rather be a Hottentot 
or a Highlander. We laugh at poor Jocko, the monkey, dan- 
cing in uniform ; or at poor Jeames, the flunkey, with his quiver- 
ing calves and plush tights ; or at the nigger Marquis of 
Marmalade, dressed out with sabre and epaulets, and giving 
himself the airs of a field-marshal. Lo 1 is not one of the 
Queen’s Pyebalds, in full fig, as great and foolish a monster? 


CHAPTER XXX. 

ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 

At last came that fortunate day at the Evergreens, when I 
was to be made acquainted with some of the county families ” 
with whom only people of Ponto’s rank condescended to associ- 
ate. And now, although poor Ponto had just been so cruelly 
made to bleed on occasion of his son’s new uniform, and though 
he was in the direst and most cutthroat spirits with an over- 
drawn account at the banker’s, and other pressing evils of 
poverty ; although a tenpenny bottle of Marsala and an awful 
parsimony presided generally at his table, yet the poor fellow 
was obliged to assume the most frank and jovial air of cordi- 
ality ; and all the covers being removed from the hangings, and 
new dresses being procured for the young ladies, and the family 
plate being unlocked and displayed, the house and all within 
assumed a benevolent and festive appearance. The kitchen 
fires began to blaze, the good wine ascended from the cellar, a 
professed cook actually came over from Guttlebury to compile 


io8 


77IE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


culinary abominations. Stripes was in a new coat, and so was 
Ponto, for a wonder, and Tummus’s button-suit was worn cn 
permanc7icc!*^ 

And all this to show oif the little lord, thinks I. All this in 
honor of a stupid little cigarrified Cornet of dragoons, who can 
barely write his name,— while an eminent and profound moral- 
ist like — somebody — is fobbed off with cold mutton and relays 
of pig. Well, well : a martyrdom of cold mutton is just bearable. 
I pardon Mrs. Ponto, from my heart I do, especially as I 
wouldn’t turn out of the best bedroom, in spite of all her hints ; 
but held my ground in the chintz tester, vowing that Lord 
Gules, as a young man, was quite small and hardy enough to 
make himself comfortable elsewhere. 

The great Ponto party was a very august one. The Haw- 
bucks came in their family coach, with the blood-red hand 
emblazoned all over it : and their man in yellow livery waited 
in country fashion at table, only to be exceeded in splendor by 
the Hipsleys, the opposition baronet, in light-blue. The old 
Ladies Fitzague drove over in their little old chariot with the 
fat black horses, and fat coachman, the fat footman — (why are 
dowagers’ horses and footmen always fat ?) And soon after 
these personages had arrived, with their auburn fronts and red 
beaks and turbans, came the Honorable and Reverend Lionel 
Pettipois, who with General and Mrs. Sago formed the rest of 
the party. ‘‘Lord and Lady Frederick Howlet were asked, 
but they have friends at Ivybush,” Mrs. Ponto told me : and 
that very morning, the Castlehaggards sent an excuse, as her 
ladyship had a return of the quinsy. Between ourselves, Lady 
Castlehaggard’s quinsy always comes on when there is dinner 
at the Evergreens. 

If the keeping of polite company could make a woman 
happy, surely my kind hostess Mrs. Ponto was on that day a 
happy woman. Every person present (except the unlucky im- 
postor who pretended to a connection with the Snobbington 
family, and General Sago, who had brought home I don’t know 
how many lacs of rupees from India,) was related to the Peerage 
or the Baronetage. Mrs. P. had her heart’s desire. If she had 
been an Earl’s daughter herself could she have expected better 
company ? — and her family were in the oil-trade at Bristol, as 
all her friends very well know. 

What I complained of in my heart was not the dining — - 
which, for this once, was plentiful and comfortable enough — 

♦ I cauc:lu him in this costume, trying the flavor of the sauce of a tipsy-cake, which was 
made by Mrs. Ponto’ s own hands for her guests’ delectation. 


Olsr SOME COUNTR V SNOBS, 


109 

but the prodigious dulness of the talking part of the entertain- 
ment. O my beloved brother Snobs of the City, if we love each 
other no better than our country brethren, at least we amuse 
each other more ; if we bore ourselves, we are not called upon 
to go ten miles to do it ! 

For instance, the Hipsleys came ten miles from the south, 
and the Hawbucks ten miles from the north, of the Evergreens ; 
and were magnates in two different divisions of the country of 
Mangelwurzelshire. Hipsley, who is an old baronet with a 
bothered estate, did not care to show his contempt for Haw- 
buck, who is a new creation, and rich. Hawbuck, on his part, 
gives himself patronizing airs to General Sago, who looks upon 
the Pontos as little better than paupers. “ Old Lady Blanche,’^ 
says Ponto, I hope will leave something to her goddaughter 
— -my second girl — weVe all of us half-poisoned ourselves with 
taking her physic.’^ 

Lady Blanche and Lady Rose Fitzague have, the first, a 
medical, and the second a literary turn. I am inclined to be- 
lieve the former had a wet compresse around her body, on the 
occasion when I had the happiness of meeting her. She doc- 
tors everybody in the neighborhood, of which she is the orna- 
ment ; and has tried everything on her own person. She went 
into Court, and testified publicly her faith in St. John Long : 
she swore by Doctor Buchan, she took quantities of Gambouge’s 
Universal Medicine, and whole boxfuls of Parr’s Life Pills. 
She has cured a multiplicity of headaches by Squinstone’s Eye- 
snuff • she wears a picture of Hahnemann in her bracelet and 
a lock of Priessnitz’s hair in a brooch. She talked about her 
own complaints and those of her confida7ite for the time being, 
to every lady in the room successively, from our hostess down 
to Miss Wirt, taking them into corners, and whispering about 
bronchitis, hepatitis, St. Vitus, neuralgia, cephalalgia, and so 
forth. I observed poor fat Lady Hawbuck in a dreadful alarm 
after some communication regarding the state of her daughter 
Miss Lucy Hawbuck’s health, and Mrs. Sago turn quite yellow, 
and put down her third glass of Madeira, at a warning glance 
from Lady Blanche. 

Lady Rose talked literature, and about the book-club at 
Guttlebury, and is very strong in voyages and travels. She 
has a prodigious interest in Borneo, and displayed a knowledge 
of the history of the Punjaub and Kaffirland that does credit 
to her memory. Old General Sago, who sat perfectly silent 
and plethoric, roused up as from a lethargy when the former 
country was mentioned, and gave the company his story about 


110 


mE BOOK OF SATOBS. 


a hog-hunt at Ramjugger. I observed her ladyship treated 
with something like contempt her neighbor the Reverend Lionel 
Pettipois, a young divine whom you may track through the 
country by little awakening’^ books at half a crown a hundred, 
which dribble out of his pockets wherever he goes. I saw 
him give Miss Wirt a sheaf of ‘‘ The Little Washerwoman on 
Putney Common, and to Miss Hawbuck a couple of dozen of 
“ Meat in the Tray ; or the Young Butcher-boy Rescued; ’’ and 
on paying a visit to Guttlebury jail, I saw two notorious fellows 
waiting their trial there (and temporarily occupied with a game 
of cribbage), to whom his Reverence offered a tract as he was 
walking over Crackshins Common, and who robbed him of his 
purse, umbrella, and cambric handkerchief, leaving him the 
tracts to distribute elsewhere. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 

Why, dear Mr. Snob,” said a young lady of rank and fashion 
(to whom I present my best compliments), “ if you found every- 
thing so snobbish at the Evergreens, if the pig bored you and 
the mutton was not to your liking, and Mrs. Ponto was a hum- 
bug, and Miss Wirt a nuisance, with her abominable piano prac- 
tice, — why did you stay so long ? ” 

Ah, Miss, what a question ! Have you never heard of gal- 
lant British soldiers storming batteries, of doctors passing 
nights in plague wards of lazarettos, and other instances of 
martyrdom ? What do you suppose induced gentlemen to walk 
two miles up to the batteries of Sobraon, with a hundred and 
fifty thundering guns bowling them down by hundreds ? — not 
pleasure, surely. What causes your respected father to quit 
his comfortable home for his chambers, after dinner, and pore 
over the most dreary law papers until long past midnight ? 
Duty, Mademoiselle ; duty, which must be done alike by mili- 
tary, or legal, or literary gents. There’s a power of martyrdom 
in our profession. 

You won’t believe it? Your rosy lips assume a smile of 
incredulity — a most naughty and odious expression in a young 
lady’s face. Well, then, the fact is, that my chambers, No. 24 
Pump Court, Temple, were being painted by the Honorable 


A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS. 


Ill 


Society, and Mrs. Slamkin, my laundress, having occasion to 
go into Durham to see her daughter, who is married, and has 
presented her with the sweetest little grandson — a few weeks 
could not be better spent than in rusticating. But ah, how 
delightful Pump Court looked when I revisited its well-known 
chimney-pots ! Cari luoghi. ^ Welcome, welcome, O fog and 
smut ! 

But if you think there is no moral in the foregoing account 
of the Pontine Family, you are. Madam, most painfully mis- 
taken. In this very chapter we are going to have the moral — 
why, the whole of the papers are nothing hut the moral, setting 
forth as they do the folly of being a Snob. 

You will remark that in the Country Snobography my poor 
friend Ponto has been held up almost exclusively for the public 
gaze — and why ? Because we went to no other house 'i Be- 
cause other families did not welcome us to their mahogany? 
No, no. Sir John Hawbuck of the Haws, Sir John Hipsley of 
Briary Hall, don’t shut the gates of hospitality : of General 
Sago’s mulligatawny I could speak from experience. And the 
two old ladies at Guttlebury, were they nothing ? Do you sup- 
pose that an agreeable young dog, who shall be nameless, would 
not be made welcome ? Don’t you know that people are too 
glad to see a?iybody in the country ? 

But those dignified personages do not enter into the scheme 
of the present work, and are but minor characters of our Snob 
drama ; just as, in the play, kings and emperors are not half so 
important as many humble persons. The Doge of Venice., for 
instance, gives way to Othello., who is but a nigger ; and the 
King of Ff' a nee to Falcofib ridge, who is a gentleman of positively 
no birth at all. So with the exalted characters above mentioned. 
I perfectly well recollect that the claret at Hawbuck’s was not 
' by any means so good as that of Hipsley’s, while, on the con- 
I trary, some white hermitage at the Flaws (by the way, the butler 
I only gave me half a glass each time) was supernacular. And I 
remember the conversations. O Madame, Madame, how stupid 
they were ! The subsoil ploughing ; the pheasants and poach- 
■ ing ; the row about the representation of the county ; the Earl 
of Mangelwurzelshire being at variance with his relative and 
nominee, the Honorable Marmaduke Tomnoddy ; all these I 
could put down, had I a mind to violate the confidence of pri- 
vate life ; and a great deal of conversation about the weather, 
the Mangelwurzelshire Hunt, new manures, and eating and 
drinking, of course. 

But cui bong ? In these perfectly stupid and Jipnorable 


II2 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


families there is not that Snobbishness which it is our purpose 
to expose. An ox is an ox — a great hulking, fat-sided, bellow- 
ing, munching Beef. He ruminates according to his nature, 
and consumes his destined portion of turnips or oilcake, until 
the time comes for his disappearance from the pastures, to be 
succeeded by other deep-lunged and fat-ribbed animals. Per- 
haps we do not respect an ox. We rather acquiesce in him. 
The Snob, my dear Madam, is the Frog that tries to swell him- 
self to ox size. Let us pelt the silly brute out of his folly. 

Look, I pray you, at the case of my unfortunate friend Ponto, 
a good-natured, kindly English gentleman — not over-wise, but 
quite passable — fond of port-wine, of his family, of country 
sports and agriculture, hospitably minded, with as pretty a little 
patrimonial country-house as heart can desire, and a thousand 
pounds a year. It is not much ; but, eiitre nous, people can 
live for less, and not uncomfortably. 

For instance, there is the doctor, whom Mrs. P. does not 
condescend to visit : that man educates a mirific family, and is 
loved by the poor for miles round : and gives them port-wine 
for physic and medicine, gratis. And how those people can 
get on with their pittance, as Mrs. Ponto says, is a wonder 
to her. 

Again, there is the clergyman. Doctor Chrysostom, — Mrs. 
P. says they quarrelled about Puseyism, but I am given to un- 
derstand it was because Mrs. C. had the pas of her at the Haws 
— you may see w'hat the value of his living is any day in the 
Clerical Guide ; ’’ but you don’t know what he gives away. 

Even Pettipois allows that, in whose eyes the Doctor’s sur- 
plice is a scarlet abomination; and so does Pettipois do his 
duty in his way, and administer not only his tracts and his talk, 
but his money and his means to his people. As a lord’s son, 
by the way, Mrs. Ponto is uncommonly anxious that he should 
marry either of the girls whom Lord Gules does not intend to 
choose. 

Well, although Pon’s income would make up almost as much 
as that of these three worthies put together — oh, my dear 
Madam, see in what hopeless penury the poor fellow lives ! 
What tenant can look to his forbearance ? What poor man can 
hope for his charity ? “ Master’s the best of men,” honest 

Stripes says, “ and when we was in the ridgment a more free- 
handed chap didn’t live. But the way in which Missus du 
scryou, I wonder the young ladies is alive, that I du ! ” 

They live upon a fine governess and fine masters, and have 
clothes made by Lady Carabas’s own milliner ; and their 


SNOBBIUM GATHERUM, 


113 

brother rides with earls to cover ; and only the best people in 
the county visit at the Evergreens, and Mrs. Ponto thinks hen 
self a paragon of wives and mothers, and a wonder of the world, 
for doing all this misery and humbug, and snobbishness, on a 
thousand a year. 

What an inexpressible comfort it was, my dear Madam, 
when Stripes put my portmanteau in the four-wheeled chaise, 
and (poor Pon being touched with sciatica) drove me over to 
the ‘‘ Carabas Arms ” at Guttlebury, where we took leave. 
There were some bagmen there, in the Commercial Room, and 
one talked about the house he represented ; and another about 
his dinner, and a third about the Inns on the road, and so forth 
— a talk, not very wise, but honest and to the purpose — about 
as good as that of the country gentlemen : and oh, how much 
pleasanter than listening to Miss Wirt’s show-pieces on the 
piano, and Mrs. Ponto’s genteel cackle about the fashion and 
the county families ! 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

SNOBBIUM GATHERUM. 

When I see the great effect which these papers are produ- 
cing on an intelligent public, I have a strong hope that before 
long we shall have a regular Snob-department in the newspapers, 
just as we have the Police Courts and the Court News at pres- 
ent. When a flagrant case of bone-crushing or Poor-law abuse 
occurs in the world, who so eloquent as The Times to point it out ? 
When a gross instance of Snobbishness happens, why should 
not the indignant journalist call the public attention to that de- 
linquency too } 

How, for instance, could that wonderful case of the Earl of 
Mangelwurzel and his brother be examined in the Snobbish 
point of view? Let alone the hectoring, the bullying, the 
vaporing, the bad grammar, the mutual recriminations, lie-giv- 
ings, challenges, retractions, which abound in the fraternal dis- 
pute — put out of the question these points as concerning the 
individual nobleman and his relative, with whose personal affairs 
we have nothing to do — and consider how intimately corrupt, 
how habitually grovelling and mean, how entirely Snobbish in a 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


I14 

word, a whole county must be which can find no better chiefs 
or leaders than these two gentlemen. “ We don’t want,*’ the 
great county of Mangelwurzelshire seems to say, ‘‘ that a man 
should be able to write good grammar; or that he should keep 
a Christian tongue in his head ; or that he should have the 
commonest decency of temper, or even a fair share of good 
sense, in order to represent us in Parliament. All we require 
is, that a man should be recommended to us by the Earl of 
Mangelwurzelshire. And all that we require of the Earl of 
Mangelwurzelshire is that he should have fifty thousand a year 
and hunt the country.” O you pride of all Snobland ! O you 
crawling, truckling, self-confessed lackeys and parasites ! 

But this is growing too savage : don’t let us forget our 
usual amenity, and that tone of playfulness and sentiment with 
which the beloved reader and writer have pursued their mutual 
reflections hitherto. Well, Snobbishness pervades the little 
Social farce as well as the great State Comedy ; and the self- 
same moral is tacked to either. 

There was, for instance, an account in the papers of a young 
lady who, misled by a fortune-teller, actually went part of the 
way to India (as far as Bagnigge Wells, I think,) in search of a 
husband who was promised her there. Do you suppose this 
poor deluded little soul would have left her shop for a man be- 
low her in rank, or for anything but a darling of a Captain in 
epaulets and a red coat ? It was her Snobbish sentiment that 
misled her, and made her vanities a prey to the swindling for- 
tune-teller. 

Case 2 was that of Mademoiselle de Saugrenue, the in- 
teresting young Frenchwoman with a profusion of jetty ringlets,” 
who lived for nothing at a boarding-house at Gosport, was then 
conveyed to Fareham gratis : and being there, and lying on the 
bed of the good old lady her entertainer, the dear girl took occa- 
sion to rip open the mattress, and steal a cash-box, with which 
she fled to London. How would you account for the prodigious 
benevolence exercised towards the interesting young French 
lady ? Was it her jetty ringlets or her charming face ? — Bah ! 
Do ladies love others for having pretty faces and black hair ? — • 
she said she was a relation of Lord de Saugrenue : talked qf 
her ladyship her aunt, and of herself as a De Saugrenue. The 
honest boarding-house people were at her feet at'once. Good, 
honest, simple, lord-loving children of Snobland. 

Finally, there was the case of ‘‘ the Right Honorable Mr. 
Vernon,” at York. The Right Honorable was the son of a 
nobleman, and practised on an old Lady. He procured from 


SNOBBIUM GATHERUM. 


her dinners, money, wearing-apparel, spoons, implicit credence, 
and an entire refit of linen. Then he cast his nets over a family 
of father, mother, and daughters, one of whom he proposed to 
marry. The father lent him money, the mother made jams and 
pickles for him, the daughters vied with each other in cooking 
dinners for the Right Honorable — and what was the end ? 
One day the traitor fled, with a teapot and a basketful of cold 
victuals. It was the “Right Honorable” which baited the 
hook which gorged all these greedy, simple Snobs. Would 
they have been taken in by a commoner ? What old lady is 
there, my dear sir, who would take in you and me, were we ever 
so ill to do, and comfort us, and clothe us, and give us her 
money, and her silver forks ? Alas and alas ! what mortal man 
that speaks the truth can hope for such a landlady ? And yet, 
all these instances of fond and credulous Snobbishness have 
occurred in the same week’s paper, with who knows how many 
score more } 

Just as we had concluded the above remarks comes a pretty 
little note sealed with a pretty little butterfly — bearing a north- 
ern postmark — and to the following effect : — 

\(^th November. 

“ Mr. Punch, — 

“ Taking great interest in your Snob Papers, we are very 
anxious to know under what class of that respectable fraternity 
you would designate us. 

“ We are three sisters, from seventeen to twenty-two. Our 
father is ho7iestly and truly of a very good family (you will say 
it is Snobbish to mention that, but I wish to state the plain 
fact) ; our maternal grandfather was an Earl.* 

“We can afford to take in a stamped edition oi you., and all 
Dickens’ works as fast as they come out, but we do 7iot keep 
such a thing as a Peerage or even a Ba7'07ietage in the house. 

“ We live with every comfort, excellent cellar, &c., &c. ; but 
as we cannot well afford a butler, we have a neat table-maid 
(though our father was a military man, has travelled much, 
been in the best society, &c.). We have a coachnmn and helper, 
but we don’t put the latter into buttons, nor make them wait 
at table, like Stripes and Tummus. f 

“ We are just the same to persons with a handle to theii 
name as to those without it. We wear a moderate modicum 
of crinoline, t and are never //>;// § in the morning. We have 


* The introduction of Grandpapa is, I fear, Snobbish, 
t That is, as you like. I don’t object to buttons in moderation. 
$ Quite right. 


§ Bless you! 


rilE BOOK OF SjVOBS. 


ii6 

good and abundant dinners on china (though we have plate *), 
and just as good when alone as with company. 

Now, my dear Mr, Punch,, will you please give us a short 
answer in your next number, and I will be so much obliged to 
you. Nobody knows we are writing to you, not even our father ; 
nor will we ever tease f you again if you will only give us an 
answer — just for fun, now do ! 

If you get as far as this, which is doubtful, you will proba- 
bly fling it into the fire. If you do, I cannot help it ; but I am 
of a sanguine disposition, and entertain a lingering hope. At 
all events, I shall be impatient for next Sunday, for you reach 
us on that day, and I am ashamed to confess, we cannot resist 
opening you in the carriage driving home from church, t 

I remain, &c., &c., for myself and sisters. 

‘‘ Excuse this scrawl, but I always write headlong'" § 

“ P.S. — You were rather stupid last week, don’t you think ? |[ 
We keep no gamekeeper, and yet have always abundant game 
for friends to shoot, in spite of the poachers. We never write 
on perfumed paper — in short, I can’t help thinking that if you 
knew us you would not think us Snobs.” 

To this I reply in the following manner: — My dear young 
ladies, I know your post-town : and shall be at church there 
the Sunday after next ; when you will please to wear a tulip or 
some little trifle in your bonnets, so that I may know you I 
You will recognize me and my dress — a quiet-looking . young 
fellow, in a white top-coat, a crimson satin neck-cloth, light- 
blue trousers, with glossy tipped boots, and an emerald breast- 
pin. I shall have a black crape round my white hat ; and my 
usual bamboo cane with the richly-gilt knob. I am sorry there 
will be no time to get up mustaches between now and next week. 

“ From seventeen to two-and-twenty ! Ye gods ! what ages i 
Dear young creatures, I can see you all three. Seventeen 
suits me, as nearest my own time of life ; but mind, I don’t say 
two-and-twenty is too old. No, no. And that pretty, roguish, 
demure, middle one. Peace, peace, thou silly little fluttering 
heart ! 

You Snobs, dear young ladies ! I will pull any man’s 
nose who says so. There is no harm in being of a good family. 

* Snobbish ; and I doubt whether you ought to dine as well when alone as with com- 
pany. You will be getting too good dinners. 

t We like to be teased ; but tell papa. 

t O garters and stars 1 v/hat will Captain Gordon and Exeter Hall say to this? 

§ Dear little enthusiast 1 

U You were never more mistaken, Miss, in your life. 


SATOBS AND MARRIA GE. I j y 

You can’t help it, poor clears. What’s in a name ? What is in 
a handle to it ? I confess openly that 1 should not object to 
being a Duke myself ; and between ourselves you might see a 
worse leg for a garter. 

You Snobs, dear little good-natured things, no ! — that is, 
I hope not — I think not — 1 won’t be too confident — none of us 
should be — that we are not Snobs. That very confidence 
savors of arrogance, and to be arrogant is to be a Snob. In 
all the social gradations from sneak to tyrant, nature has 
placed a most wondrous and various progeny of Snobs. But 
are there no kindly natures, no tender hearts, no souls humble, 
simple, and truth-loving ? Ponder well on this question, sweet 
young ladies. And if you can answer it, as no doubt you can 
— lucky are you — and lucky the respected Herr Papa, and 
lucky the three handsome young gentlemen who are about to 
become each others’ brothers-in-law.” 


•CHAPTER XXXIII. 

SNOBS AND MARRIAGE. 

Everybody of the middle rank who walks through this life 
with a sympathy for his companions on the same journey — at 
any rate, every man who has been jostling in the world for 
some three or four lustres — must make no end of melancholy 
reflections upon the fate of those victims whom Society, that is 
Snobbishness, is, immolating every day. With love and sim- 
plicity and natural kindness Snobbishness is perpetually at 
war. People dare not be happy for fear of Snobs. People 
dare not love for fear of Snobs. People pine away lonely 
under the tyranny of Snobs. Honest kindly hearts dry up and 
die. Gallant generous lads, blooming with hearty youth, swell 
into bloated old-bacherlorhood, and burst and tumble over. 
Tender girls wither into shrunken decay, and perish solitary, 
from whom Snobbishness has cut off the common claim to hap- 
piness and affection with which Nature endowed us all. My 
heart grows sad as I see the blundering tyrant’s handiwork. 
As I behold it I swell with cheap rage, and glow with fury 
against the Snob. Come down, I say, thou skulking dulness ! 
Come down, thou stupid bully, and give up thy brutal ghost ! 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


Ii8 

And I arm myself with the sword and spear, and taking leave 
of my family, go forth to do battle with that hideous ogre and 
giant, that brutal despot in Snob Castle, who holds so many 
gentle hearts in torture and thrall. 

When Pimch is king, I declare there shall be no such thing 
as old maids and old bachelors. The Reverend Mr. Malthus 
shall be burned annually, instead of Guy Fawkes. Those who 
don’t marry shall go into the workhouse. It shall be a sin for 
the poorest not to have a pretty girl to love him. 

The above reflections came to mind after taking a walk with 
an old comrade. Jack Spiggot by name, who is just passing into 
the state of old-bachelorhood, after the manly and blooming 
youth in which I remember him. Jack was one of the hand- 
somest fellows in England when we entered together in the 
Highland Buffs ; but I quitted the Cuttykilts early, and lost 
sight of him for many years. 

Ah ! how changed he is from those days ! He wears a 
waistband now, and has begun to dye his whiskers. His cheeks, 
which were red, are now mottled ; his eyes, once so bright and 
steadfast, are the color of peeled plovers’ eggs. 

“ Are you married. Jack? ” says I, remembering how con- 
sumedly in love he was with his cousin Letty Lovelace, when 
the Cuttykilts were quartered at Strathbungo some twenty 
years ago. 

‘‘Married? no,” says he. “Not money enough. Hard 
enough to keep myself, much more a family, on five hundred a 
year. Come to Dickinson’s ; there’s some of the best Madeira 
in London there, my boy.” So we went and talked over old 
times. The bill for dinner and wine consumed was prodigious, 
and the quantity of brandy-and-water that Jack took showed 
what a regular boozer he was. “ A guinea or two guineas. 
What the devil do I care what I spend for my dinner?” 
says he. 

“ And Letty Lovelace ? ” says I. 

Jack’s countenance fell. However, he burst into a loud 
laugh presently. “ Letty Lovelace ! ” says he. “ She’s Letty 
Lovelace still ; but Gad, such a wizened old woman ! She’s as 
thin as a thread-paper ; (you remember what a figure she had :) 
her nose has got red, and her teeth blue. She’s always ill j 
always quarrelling with the rest of the family ; always psalm- 
singing, and always taking pills. Gad, I had a rare escape 
there. Push round the grog, old boy.” 

Straightway memory went back to the days when Letty was 
the loveliest of blooming young creatures : when to hear her 


SNOBS AND MARRIAGE, 


119 

sing was to make the heart jump into your throat ; when to 
see her dance, was better than Montessu or Noblet (they were 
the Ballet Queens of those days) ; when Jack used to wear a 
locket of her hair, with a little gold chain round his neck, and, 
exhilarated with toddy, after a sederunt of the Cuttykilt mess, 
used to pull out this token, and kiss it, and howl about it, to 
the great amusement of the bottle-nosed old Major and the rest 
of the table. 

My father and hers couldn’t put their horses together,” 
Jack said. “The general wouldn’t come down with more than 
six thousand. My governor said it shouldn’t be done under 
eight. Lovelace told him to go and be hanged, and so we 
parted company. They said she was in a decline. Gammon ! 
She’s forty, and as tough and as sour as this bit of lemon-peel. 
Don’t put much into your punch, Snob my boy. No man can 
stand punch after wine.” 

“ And what are your pursuits. Jack ? ” says I. 

“ Sold out when the governor died. Mother lives at Bath. 
Go down there once a year for a week. Dreadful slow. Shil- 
ling whist. Four sisters — all unmarried except the youngest — 
awful work. Scotland in August. Italy in the winter. Cursed 
rheumatism. Come to London in March, and toddle about at 
the Club, old boy ; and we won’t go home till maw-aw-rning 
till daylight does appear.” 

“And here’s the wreck of two lives!” mused the present 
Snobograph, after taking leave of Jack Spiggot. “ Pretty merry 
Letty Lovelace’s rudder lost and she cast away, and handsome 
Jack Spiggot stranded on the shore like a drunken Trinculo.” 

What was it that insulted Nature (to use no higher name), . 
and perverted her kindly intentions towards them What 
cursed frost was it that nipped the love that both were bearing, 
and condemned the girl to sour sterility, and the lad to selfish 
old-bachelorhood.^ It was the infernal Snob tyrant who gov- 
erns us all, who says, Thou shalt not love without a lady’s- 
maid ; thou shalt not marry without a carriage and horses ; thou 
shalt have no wife in thy heart, and no children on thy knee, 
without a page in buttons and a French bo7i7ie ; thou shalt go 
to the devil unless thou hast a brougham ; marry poor, and 
society shall forsake thee ; thy kinsmen shall avoid thee as a 
criminal ; thy aunts and uncles shall turn up their eyes and 
bemoan the sad, sad manner in which Tom or Harry has thrown 
himself away.” You, young woman, may sell yourself without 
shame, and marry old Croesus ; you, young man, may lie away 
your heart and your life for a jointure. But if you are poor, 


120 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


woe be to you ! Society, the brutal Snob autocrat, consigns 
you to solitary perdition. Wither, poor girl, in your garret: 
rot, poor bachelor, in your Club. 

When I see those graceless recluses — those unnatural 
monks and nuns of the order of St. Beelzebub,"^ my hatred for 
Snobs, and their worship, and their idols, passes all continence. 
Let us hew down that man-eating Juggernaut, I say, that 
hideous Dagon \ and I glow with the heroic courage of Tom 
Thumb, and join battle with the giant Snob. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

SNOBS AND MARRIAGE. 

In that noble romance called ‘‘Ten Thousand a Year,^^ I 
remember a profoundly pathetic description of the Christian 
manner in which the hero, Mr. Aubrey, bore his misfortunes. 
After making a display of the most florid and grandiloquent 
resignation, and quitting his country mansion, the writer supr 
poses Aubrey to come to town in a post-chaise and pair, sitting 
bodkin probably between his wife and sister. It is about seven 
o’clock, carriages are rattling about, knockers are thundering, 
and tears bedim the fine eyes of Kate and Mrs. Aubrey as they 
think that in happier times at this hour — their Aubrey used 
formerly to go out to dinner to the houses of the aristocracy his 
friends. This is the gist of the passage — the elegant words I 
forget. But the noble, noble sentiment I shall always cherish 
and remember. What can be more sublime than the notion of 
a great man’s relatives in tears about — his dinner ? With a few 
touches, what author ever more happily described A Snob ? 

We were reading the passage lately at the house of my 
friend, Raymond Gray, Esquire, l^arrister-at-Law, an ingenuous 
youth without the least practice, but who has luckily a great 
share of good spirits, which enables him to bide his time, and 
bear laughingly his humble position in the world. Meanwhile, 
until it is altered, the stern laws of necessity and the expenses 
of the Northern Circuit oblige Mr. Gray to live in a very tiny 

* This, of course, is understood to apply only to those unmarried J^efsons whom a mean 
and Snobbish fear about money^has kept from fulfilling their natural destiny. Ma:iy persons 
there are devoted to celibacy because they cannot help it. Of these a man would be a brute 
who spoke roughly. Indeed, after Miss O’Toole’s conduct to the writer, he would be the 
last to condemn. But never mind* these are personal matters. 


SNOBS AND MARRIAGE, 


I2I 


mansion in a very queer small square in the airy neighborhood 
of Gray’s Inn Lane. 

What is the more remarkable is, that Gray has a wife there. 
Mrs. Gray was a Miss Harley Baker : and I suppose I need 
not say that is a respectable family. Allied to the Cavendishes, 
the Oxfords, the Marrybones, they still, though rather dechus 
from their original splendor, hold their heads as high as any. 
Mrs. Harley Baker, I know, never goes to church without John 
behind to carry her prayer-book ; nor will Miss Welbeck, her 
sister, walk twenty yards a-shopping without the protection of 
Figby, her sugar-loaf page ; though the old lady is as ugly 
as any woman in the parish and as tall and whiskery as a 
grenadier. The astonishment is, how Emily Harley Baker 
could have stooped to marry Raymond Gray. She, who v/as 
the prettiest and proudest of the family ; she, who refused Sir 
Cockle Byles, of the Bengal Service ; she, who turned up her 
little nose at Essex Temple, Q. C., and connected with the 
noble house of Albyn ; she, who had but \^oooL pour tout 
potage^ to many a man who had scarcely as much more. A 
scream of wrath and indignation was uttered by the whole 
family when they heard of this 7nesallia7ice, Mrs. Harley Baker 
never speaks of her daughter now but with tears in her eyes, 
and as a ruined creature. Miss Welbeck says, ‘‘ I consider 
that man a villain ; ” and has denounced poor good-natured 
Mrs. Perkins as a swindler, at whose ball the young people 
met for the first time. 

Mr. and Mrs. Gray, meanwhile, live in Gray’s Inn Lane 
aforesaid, with a maid-servant and a nurse, whose hands are 
very full, and in a most provoking and unnatural state of hap- 
piness. They have never once thought of crying about their 
dinner, like the wretchedly puling and Snobbish womankind of 
my favorite Snob Aubrey, of “Ten Thousand a Year but, on 
the contrary, accept such humble victuals as fate awards them 
with a most perfect and thankful good grace — nay, actually 
have a portion for a hungry friend at times — as the present 
writer can gratefully testify. 

I was mentioning these dinners, and some admirable lemon 
puddings which Mrs. Gray makes, to our mutual friend the 
great Mr. Goldmore, the East India Director, when that gentle- 
man’s face assumed an expression of almost apoplectic terror, 
and he gasped out, “What! Do they give dinners?'*’ He 
seemed to think it ^ crime and a wonder that' such people 
should dine at all, and that it was their custom to huddle round 
their kitchen-fire over a bone and a crust. Whenever he meets 


122 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


them in society, it is a matter of wonder to him (and he always 
expresses his surprise very loud) how the lady can appear 
decently dressed, and the man have an unpatched coat to his 
back. I have heard him enlarge upon this poverty before the 
whole room at the ‘‘ Conflagrative Club,” to which he and I 
and Gray have the honor to belong. 

We meet at the Club on most days. At half-past four, 
Goldmore arrives in St. James’s Street from the City, and you 
may see him reading the evening papers in the bow-window of 
the Club, which enfilades Pall Mall — a large plethoric man, with 
a bunch of seals in a large bow-windowed light waistcoat. He 
has large coat-tails, stuffed with agents’ letters and papers 
about companies of which he is a Director. His seals jingle as 
he walks. I wish I had such a man for an uncle, and that he 
himself were childless. I would love and cherish him, and be 
kind to him. 

At six o’clock in the full season, when all the world is in 
St. James’s Street, and the carriages are cutting in and out 
among the cabs on the stand, and the tufted dandies are show- 
ing their listless faces out of ‘‘ White’s,” and you see respecta- 
ble gray-headed gentlemen waggling their heads to each other 
through the plate-glass windows of “ Arthur’s : ” and the red- 
coats wish to be Briareian, so as to hold all the gentlemen’s 
horses ; and that wonderful red-coated royal porter is sunning 
himself before Marlborough House ; — at the noon of London 
time, you see a light-yellow carriage with black horses, and a 
coachman in a tight floss-silk wig, and two footmen in powder 
and white andyellow liveries, and a large woman inside in shot- 
silk, a poodle, and a pink parasol, which drives up to the gate 
of the ‘‘ Conflagrative,” and the page goes and says to Mr. 
Goldmore (who is perfectly aware of the fact, as he is looking 
out of the windows with about forty other “ Conflagrative ” 
bucks), “ Your carriage. Sir.” G. wags his head. Remember, 
eight o’clock precisely,” says he to Mulligatawney, the other 
East India Director ; and, ascending the carriage, plumps down 
by the side of Mrs. Goldmore for a drive in the Park, and then 
home to Portland Place. As the carriage whirls off, all the 
young bucks in the Club feel a secret elation. It is a part of 
their establishment, as it were. That carriage belongs to their 
Club, and their Club belongs to them. They follow the 
equipage with interest ; they eye it knowingly as they see it in 
the Park. But halt ! we are not come to the Club Snobs yet. 
O my brave Snobs, what a flurry there will be among you whe;i 
those papers appear ! 


SJVOBS AND marriage. 




Well, you may judge, from the above description, what sort 
of a man Goldmore is. A dull and pompous Leadenhall Street 
Croesus, good-natured withal, and affable — cruelly affable. 
“ Mr. Goldmore can never forget,^' his lady used to say, “ that 
it was Mrs. Gray^s grandfather who sent him to India ; and 
though that young woman has made the most inprudent marriage 
in the world, and has left her station in society, her husband 
seems an ingenious and laborious young man, and we shall do 
everything in our power to be of use of him.’^ So they used to 
ask the Grays to dinner twice or thrice in a season, when^ by 
way of increasing the kindness. Buff, the butler, is ordered to 
hire a fly to convey them to and from Portland Place. 

Of course I am much too good-natured a friend of both par- 
ties not to tell Gray of Goldmore^s opinion regarding him, and 
the nabob’s astonishment at the idea of the briefless barrister 
having any dinner at all. Indeed, Goldmore’s saying became 
a joke against Gray amongst us wags at the Club, and we used 
to ask him when he tasted meat last.? whether we should bring* 
him home something from dinner .? and cut a thousand other 
mad pranks with him in our facetious way. 

One day, then, coming home from the Club, Mr. Gray con- 
veyed to his wife the astounding information that he had asked 
Goldmore to dinner. 

My love,” says Mrs. Gray, in a tremor, ‘‘ how could you 
be so cruel ? Why, the dining-room won’t hold Mrs. Gold- 
more.” 

‘‘ Make your mind easy, Mrs. Gray ; her ladyship is in 
Paris. It is only Croesus that’s coming, and we are going to 
the play afterwards — to Sadler’s Wells. Goldmore said at the 
Club that he thought Shakspeare was a great dramatic poet, 
and ought to be patronized ; whereupon, fired with enthusiam, 
I invited him to our banquet. 

‘‘Goodness gracious! what can vje give him for dinner? 
He has two French cooks ; you know Mrs. Goldmore is always 
telling us about them ; and he dines with Aldermen everyday.” 

A plain leg of mutton, my Lucy, 

I prythee get ready at three ; 

Have it tender, and smoking, and juicy. 

And what better meat can there be ? ’ ” 

says Gray, quoting my favorite poet. 

“ But the cook is ill ; and you know that horrible Pattypan 
the pastry-cook’s ” 

“ Silence, Frau ! ” says Gray, in a deep tragedy voice. “/ 
will have the ordering of this repast. Do all things as I bid 


124 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


thee. Invite our friend Snob here to partake of the feast. Be 
mine the task of procuring it.’’ 

“Don’t be expensive, Raymond,” says his wife. 

“ Peace, thou timid partner of the briefless one. Gold- 
more’s dinner shall be suited to our narrow means. Only do 
thou in all things my commands.” And seeing by the peculiar 
expression of the rogue’s countenance, that some mad waggery 
was in preparation, I awaited the morrow with anxiety. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

SNOBS AND MARRIAGE 

Punctual to the hour — (by the way, I cannot omit here to 
mark down my hatred, scorn, and indignation towards those 
miserable Snobs who come to dinner at nine, when they are 
asked at eight, in order to make a sensation in the company. 
May the loathing of honest folks, the backbiting of others, the 
curses of cooks, pursue these wretches, and avenge the society 
on which they trample !) — Punctual, I say, to the hour of five, 
which Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Gray had appointed, a youth of 
an elegant appearance, in a neat evening-dress, whose trim 
whiskers indicated neatness, whose light step denoted activity 
(for in sooth he was hungry, and always is at the dinner hour, 
whatsoever that hour may, be), and whose rich golden hair, 
curling down his shoulders, was set off by a perfectly new four- 
and-ninepenny silk hat, was seen wending his way down Bittle- 
stone Street, Bittlestone Square, Gray’s Inn. The person in 
question, I need not say, was Mr. Snob. He is never late 
when invited to dine. But to proceed with my narrative : — 

Although Mr. Snob may have flattered himself that he made 
a sensation as he strutted down Bittlestone Street with his 
richly gilt knobbed cane (and indeed I vow I saw heads look- 
ing at me from Miss Squilsby’s, the brass-plated milliner oppo- 
site Raymond Gray’s, who has three silver-paper bonnets, and 
two fly-blown French prints . of fashion in the window), yet what 
was the emotion produced by my arrival, compared to that with 
which the little street thrilled, when at five minutes past five 
the floss-wigged coachman, the yellow hammer-cloth and 
flunkeys, the black horses and blazing silver harness of Mr. 


SNOBS AND MARR/AGE 


^25 

Goldmore whirled down the street ! It is a very little street, of 
very little houses, most of them with very large brass plates 
like Miss Squilsby’s. Coal merchants, architects and survey- 
ors, two surgeons, a solicitor, a dancing-master, and of course 
several house-agents, occupy the houses — little two-storeyed 
edifices with little stucco porticoes. Goldmore ’s carriage over- 
topped the roofs almost; the first floors might shake hands 
with Croesus as he lolled inside ; all the windows of those first 
floors thronged with children and women in a twinkling. There 
was Mrs. Hammerly in curl-papers ; Mrs. Saxby with her front 
awry ; Mr. Wriggles peering through the gauze curtains, holding 
the while his hot glass of rum-and-water — in fine, a tremendous 
commotion in Bittlestone Street, as the Goldmore carriage 
drove up to Mr. Raymond Gray’s door. 

How kind it is of him to come with both the footmen ! ” 
says little Mrs. Gray, peeping at the vehicle too. The huge 
domestic, descending from his perch, gave a wrap at the door 
which almost drove in the building. All the heads were out ; 
the sun was shining ; the very organ-boy paused ; the footman, 
the coach, and Goldmore’s red face and white waistcoat were 
blazing in splendor. The herculean plushed onei went back to 
open the carriage door. 

Raymond Gray opened his — in his shirt-sleeves. 

He ran up to the carriage. Come in, Goldmore,” says 
he ; just in time, my boy. Open the door, What-d’ye-call’um, 
and let your master out,” — and What-d’ye-caH’um obeyed 
mechanically, with a face of wonder and horror, only to be 
equalled by the look of stupefied astonishment which orna- 
mented the purple countenance of his master. 

‘‘Wawt taim will you please have the cage^ sir.^” says 
What-d’ye-calhum, in that peculiar, unspellable, inimitable, 
flunkefied pronunciation, which forms one of the chief charms 
of existence. 

Best have it to the theatre at night,” Gray exclaims ; “ it 
is but a step from here to the Wells, and we can walk there. 
I’ve got tickets for all. Be at Sadler’s Wells at eleven.” 

‘‘ Yes, at eleven, exclaims Goldmore, perturbedly, and walks 
with a flurried step into the house, as if he were going to execu- 
tion (as indeed he was, with that wicked Gray as a Jack Ketch 
over him). The carriage drove away, followed by numberless 
eyes from doorsteps and balconies ; its appearance is still a 
wonder in Bittlestone Street. 

Go in there, and amuse yourself with Snob,” says Gray, 
opening the little drawing-room door, I’ll call out as soon 


126 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


as the chops are ready. Fanny’s below, seeing to the pud- 
ding.” 

“ Gracious mercy ! ” says Goldmore to me, quite confidem 
tially, how could he ask us ? I really had no idea of this — 
this utter destitution.” 

“ Dinner, dinner ! ” roars out Gray, from the dining-room, 
whence issued a great smoking and frying ; and entering that 
apartment we find Mrs. Gray ready to receive us, and looking 
perfectly like a Princess who, by some accident, had a bowl of 
potatoes in her hand, which vegetables she placed on the table. 
Her husband was meanwhile cooking mutton-chops on a grid- 
iron over the fire. 

Fanny has made the roly-poly pudding,” says he ; the 
chops are my part. Here’s a fine one ; try this, Goldmore.” 
And he popped a fizzing cutlet on that gentleman’s plate. 
What words, what notes of exclamation can describe the 
nabob’s astonishment ? 

The table-cloth was a very old one, darned in a score of 
places. There was mustard in a teacup, a silver fork for Gold- 
more — all ours were iron. 

“ I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” says 
Gray, gravely. “ That fork is the only one we have. Fanny 
has it generally.” 

Raymond ! ” cries Mrs. Gray, with an imploring face. 

She was used to better things, you know • and I hope^ one 
day to get her a dinner-service. Fm told the electro-plate is 
uncommonly good. Where the deuce is that boy with the beer ? 
And now,” said he, springing up, “ I’ll be a gentleman.” And 
so he put up his coat, and sat down quite gravely, with four 
fresh mutton-chops which he had by this time broiled. 

We don’t have meat every day, Mr. Goldmore,” he con- 
tinued, and it’s a treat to me to get a dinner like this. You 
little know, you gentlemen of England, who live at home at 
ease, what hardships briefless barristers endure.” 

Gracious mercy ! ” says Mr. Goldmore. 

“ Where’s the half-and-half ? Fanny, go over to the ‘ Keys ’ 
and get the beer. Here’s sixpence.” And what was our 
astonishment when Fanny got up as if to go ! 

Gracious mercy ! let me^^' cries Goldmore. 

“ Not for worlds, my dear sir. She’s used to it. They 
wouldn’t serve you as well as they serve her. Leave her alone. 
Law bless you ! ” Raymond said, with astounding composure. 
And Mrs. Gray left the room, and actually came back with a 
tray on which there was a pewter flagon of beer. Little PoUy 


SNOBS AND MARRIAGE, 


127 

(to whom, at her christening, I had the honor of presenting a 
silver mug ex officio) followed with a couple of tobacco .pipes, 
and the queerest roguish look in her round little chubby face. 

“ Did you speak to Tapling about the gin, Fanny, my dear?” 
Gray asked, after bidding Polly put the pipes on the chimney- 
piece, which that little person had some difficulty in reaching. 

The last was turpentine, and even your brewing didn’t make 
good punch of it.” 

You would hardly suspect, Goldmore, that my wife, a 
Harley Baker, would ever make gin-punch ? I think my 
mother-in-law would commit suicide if she saw her.” 

‘‘Don’t be always laughing at mamma, • Raymond,” says 
Mrs. Gray. 

“ Well, well, she wouldn’t die, and I doiiU wish she would. 
And you don’t make gin-punch, and you don’t like it either — 
and — Goldmore, do you drink your beer out of the glass, or 
out of the pewter ? ” 

“ Gracious mercy ! ” ejaculates Croesus once more, as little 
Polly, taking the pot with both her little bunches of hands, 
offers it, .smiling, to that astonished Director. 

And so, in a word, the dinner commenced, and was pres- 
ently ended in a similar fashion. Gray pursued his unfor- 
tunate guest with the most queer and outrageous description 
of his struggles, misery, and poverty. He described how he 
cleaned the knives when they were first married ; and how he 
used to drag the children in a little cart ; how his wife could 
toss pancakes ; and what part of his dress she made. He told 
Tibbits, his clerk (who was in fact the functionary who had 
brought the beer from the public-house, which Mrs. Fanny had 
fetched from the neighboring apartment) — to fetch “ the bottle 
of port-wine,” when the dinner was over ; and told Goldmore 
as wonderful a history about the way in which that bottle of 
wine had come into his hands as any of his former stories had 
been. When the repast was all over, and it was near time to 
move to the play, and Mrs. Gray had retired, and we were 
sitting ruminating rather silently over the last glasses of the 
port. Gray suddenly breaks the silence by slapping Goldmore 
on the shoulder, and saying, “ Now, Goldmore, tell me some- 
thing.” 

“ What ? ” asks Croesus. 

“ Haven’t you had a good dinner ? ” 

Goldmore started, as if a sudden truth had just dawned 
upon him. He had had a good dinner ; and didn’t know it until 
then. The three mutton-chops consumed by him were best of 


128 


THE EOOK OF 


the mutton kind ; the potatoes were perfect of their order ; as 
for the roly-poly, it was too good. The porter was frothy and 
cool, and the port-wdne was worthy of the gills of a bishop. I 
speak with ulterior views ; for there is more in Gray’s cellar. 

“ Well,” says Goldmore, after a pause, during which he took 
time to consider the momentous question Gray put to him — 
“ Ton my word — now you say so — I — I have — I really have 
had a monsous good dinnah — monsous good, upon my ward ! 
Here’s your health. Gray my boy, and your amiable lady ; and 
when Mrs. Goldmore comes back, I hope we shall see you more 
in Portland Place.” And wdth this the time came for the play, 
and we w^ent to see Mr. Phelps at Sadler’s Wells. 

The best of this story (for the truth of every w^ord of which 
I pledge my honor) is, that after this banquet, which Goldmore 
enjoyed so, the honest fellow felt a prodigious compassion and 
regard for the starving and miserable giver of the feast, and 
determined to help him in his profession. And being a Director 
of the new'ly-established Antibilious Life Assurance Company, 
he has had Gray appointed Standing Counsel, with a pretty 
annual fee ; and only yesterday, in an appeal from Bombay 
(Buckmuckjee Bobbachee v. Ramchowder-Bahawder) in the 
Privy Council, Lord Brougham complimented Mr. Gray, who 
w^as in the case, on his curious and exact knowledge of the 
Sanscrit language. 

Whether he knows Sanscrit or not, I can’t say ; but Gold- 
more got him the business ; and so I cannot help having a 
lurking regard for that pompous old Bigwig. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. . 

SNOBS AND MARRIAGE. 

We Bachelors in Clubs are very much obliged to you,” says 
my old school and college companion, Essex Temple, “for 
the opinion which you hold of us. You call us selfish, purple- 
faced, bloated, and other pretty names. You state, in the sim- 
plest possible terms, that we shall go to the deuce. You bid 
us rot in loneliness, and deny us all claims to honesty, conduct, 
decent Christian life. Who are you, Mr. Snob, to judge us 
so ? Who are you, with your infernal benevolent smirk and 
grin, that laugh at all our generation I 


JSNOBS AATD MARRIAGE. 


129 


I will tell you my case,’’ says Essex Temple ; ^‘mine and 
my sister Polly’s, and you may make what you like of it ; and 
sneer at old maids, and bully old bachelors, if you will. 

“ I will whisper to you confidentially that my sister Polly 
was engaged to Sergeant Shirker — a fellow whose talents one 
cannot deny, and be hanged to them, but whom I have always 
known to be mean, selfish, and a prig. However, women don’t 
See these faults in the men whom Love throws in their way. 
Shirker, who has about as much warmth as an eel, made up to 
Polly years and years ago, and was no bad match for a brief- 
less barrister, as he was then. 

Have you ever read Lord Eldon’s Life ? Do you remem- 
ber how the sordid old Snob narrates his going out to purchase 
twopence worth of sprats, which he and Mrs. Scott fried be- 
tween them? And how he parades his humility, and exhibits 
his miserable poverty — he who, at that time, must have been 
making a thousand pounds a year ? Well, Shirker was just as 
proud of his prudence — ^just as thankful for his own meanness, 
and of course would not marry without a competency. Who 
so honorable ? Polly waited, and waited faintly, from year to 
year. He wasn’t sick at heart ; //A passion never disturbed his 
six hours’ sleep, or kept his ambition out of mind. He would 
rather have hugged an attorney any day than have kissed Polly, 
though she was one of the prettiest creatures in the world ; and 
while she was pining alone up stairs, reading over the stock of 
half a dozen frigid letters that the confounded prig had conde- 
scended to write to her, he\ h^ sure, was never busy with any- 
thing but his briefs in chambers — always frigid, rigid, self-sat- 
isfied, and at his duty. The marriage trailed on year after 
yOiir, while Mr. Serjeant Shirker grew to be the famous lawyer 
' he is. 

“ Meanwhile, my younger brother. Pump Temple, who was 
in the i2bth Hussars, and had the same little patrimony which 
fell to the lot of myself and Polly, must fall in love with our 
cousin, Fanny Figtree, and marry her out of hand. You should 
have seen the wedding ! Six bridesmaids in pink, to hold the 
fan, bouquet, gloves, scent-bottle, and pocket-handkerchief of 
’ the bride ; basketfuls of white favors in the vestry, to be pinned 
on to the footmen and horses ; a genteel congregation of curi- 
ous acquaintance in the pews, a shabby one of poor on the 
steps ; all the carriages of all our acquaintance, whom Aunt 
Figtree had levied for the occasion ; and of course four horses 
for Mr. Pump’s bridal vehicle. 

Then comes the breakfast, or dejcilfier., if you please, with 

9 


t^o 


THE BOOK OF SNOB^. 


a brass band in the street, and policemen to keep order. The 
happy bridegroom spends about a year’s income in dresses for 
the bridesmaids and pretty presents ; and the bride must 
have a trousseau of laces, satins, jewel-boxes and tomfoolery, 
to make her fit to be a lieutenant’s wife. There was no hesita- 
tion about Pump. He flung about his money as if it had been 
dross ; and Mrs. P. Temple, on the horse Tom Tiddler, which 
her husband gave her, was the most dashing of military women 
at Brighton or Dublin. How old Mrs. Figtree used to bore 
me and Polly with stories of Pump’s grandeur and the noble 
company he kept ! Polly lives with the Figtrees, as I am not 
rich enough to keep a home for her. 

“ Pump and I have always been rather distant. Not having 
the slightest notions about horseflesh, he has a natural con- 
tempt for me ; and in our mother’s lifetime, when the good old 
lady was always paying his debts and petting him, Fm not sure 
there was not a little jealousy. It used to be Polly that kept 
the peace between us. 

“ She went to Dublin to visit Pump, and brought back 
grand accounts of his doings — gayest man about town — Aide- 
de-Camp to the Lord Lieutenant — Fanny admired everywhere 
— Her Excellency godmother to the second boy : the eldest 
with a string of aristocratic Christian names that made the 
grandmother wild with delight. Presently Fanny and Pump 
obligingly came over to London, where the third was born. 

“ Polly was godmother to this, and who so loving as she and 
Pump now ? ‘ Oh, Essex,’ says she to me, ‘ he is so good, so 

generous, so fond of his family ; so handsome ; who can help 
loving him, and pardoning his little errors ? ’ One day, while 
Mrs. Pump was yet in the upper regions, and Doctor Finger- 
fee’s brougham at her door every day, having business at 
Guildhall, whom should I meet in Cheapside but Pump and 
Polly ? The poor girl looked more happy and rosy than I have 
seen her these twelve years. Pump, on the contrary, was rather 
blushing and embarrassed. 

‘‘ I couldn’t be mistaken inker face and its look of mischief 
and triumph. She had been committing some act of sacrifice. 
I went to the family stockbroker. She had sold out two 
thousand pounds that morning and given them to Pump. 
Quarrelling was useless — Pump had the money ; he was off to 
Dublin by the time I reached his mother’s, and Polly radiant 
still. He was going to make his fortune ; he was going to 
embark the money in the Bog of Allen — -I don’t know what. 
The fact is, he was going to pay his losses upon the last Man- 


SJVOBS AND MAR BIAGE. 


13 ^ 

Chester steeple-chase, and I leave you to imagine how much 
principal or interest poor Polly ever saw back again. 

‘‘ It was more than half her fortune, and he has had another 
thousand since from her. Then came efforts to stave off ruin 
and prevent exposure ; struggles on all our parts, and sacrifices, 
that” (here Mr. Essex Temple began to hesitate) — that 
needn’t be talked of ; but they are of no more use than such 
sacrifices ever are. Pump and his wife are abroad — I don’t 
like to ask where ; Polly has the three children, and Mr. 
Sergeant Shirker has formally written to break off an engage- 
ment, on the conclusion of which Miss Temple must herself 
have speculated, when she alienated the greater part of her 
fortune. 

‘‘ And here’s your famous theory of poor marriages ! ” Essex 
Temple cries, concluding the above history. “ How do you 
know that I don’t want to marry myself } How do you dare 
sneer at my poor sister What are we but martyrs of the 
reckless marriage system which Mr. Snob, forsooth, chooses to 
advocate 1 ” And he thought he had the better of the argu- 
ment, which, strange to say, is not my opinion. 

But for the infernal Snob-worship, might not every one of 
these people be happy ? If poor Polly’s happiness lay in link- 
ing her tender arms round such a heartless prig as the sneak 
who has deceived her, she might have been happy now — as 
happy as Raymond Raymond in the ballad, with the stone 
statue by his side. She is wretched because Mr. Sergeant 
Shirker worships money and ambition, and is a Snob and a 
coward. 

If the unfortunate Pump Temple and his giddy hussy of a 
wife have ruined themselves, and dragged down others into 
their calamity, it is because they loved rank, and horses, and 
plate, and carriages, and Court Guides., and millinery, and would 
sacrifice all to attain those objects. 

And who misguides them ? If the world were more simple, 
would not those foolish people follow the fashion ? Does not 
the world love Coiud Guides, and millinery, and plate, and 
carriages ? Mercy on us ! Read the fashionable intelligence; 
read the Co7^rt Circular; read the genteel novels; survey man- 
kind, from Pimlico to Red Lion Square, and see how the Poor 
Snob is aping the Rich Snob ; how the Mean Snob is grovelling 
at the feet of the Proud Snob ; and the Great Snob is lording 
it over his humble brother. Does the idea of equality ever 
enter Dives’ head ? Will it ever ? Will the Duchess of Fitz- 
battleaxe (I like a good name) ever believe that Lady Croesus, 


132 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


her next-door neighbor in Belgrave Square, is as good a lady as 
her Grace ? Will Lady Croesus ever leave off pining for the 
Duchess’s parties, and cease patronizing Mrs. Broadcloth, 
whose husband has not got his Baronetcy yet ? Will Mrs. 
Broadcloth ever heartily shake hands with Mrs. Seedy, and 
give up those odious calculations about poor dear Mrs. Seedy’s 
income ? Will Mrs. Seedy, who is starving in her great house, 
go and live comfortably in a little one, or in lodgings ? Will 
her landlady, Mrs. Letsam, ever stop wondering at the famili- 
arity of tradespeople, or rebuking the insolence of Suky, the 
maidj who wears flowers under her bonnet, like a lady 1 

But why hope, why wish for such times ? Do I wish all 
Snobs to perish ? Do I wish these Snob papers to determine ? 
Suicidal fool, art not thou, too, a Snob and a brother ? 


CHAPTER XXXVIL 

CLUB SNOBS. 

As I wish to be. particularly agreeable to the ladies (to whom 
I make my most humble obeisance), we will now, if you please, 
commence maligning a class of Snobs against whom, I believe, 
most female minds are embittered, — I mean Club Snobs. I 
have very seldom heard even the most gentle and placable 
woman speak without a little feeling of bitterness against those 
social institutions, those palaces swaggering in St. James’s, 
which are open to the men ; while the ladies have but their 
dingy three-windowed brick boxes in Belgravia or in Padding- 
tonia, or in the region between the road of Edgeware and that 
of Gray’s Inn. 

In my grandfather’s time it used to be Freemasonry that 
roused their anger. It was my grand-aunt (whose portrait we 
still have in the family) who got into the clock-case at the Royal 
Rosicrucian Lodge at Bungay, Suffolk, to spy the proceedings 
of the Society, of which her husband was a member, and being 
frightened by the sudden whirring and striking eleven of the 
clock (just as the Deputy-Grand-Master was bringing in the 
mystic gridiron for the reception of a neophyte), rushed out 
into the midst of the lodge assembled j and was elected, by a 
desperate unanimity, DejDuty-Grand'Mistress for life. Though 


CLUB SNOBS. 


133 


that admirable and courageous female never subsequently 
breathed a word with regard to the secrets of the initiation, yet 
she inspired all our family with such a terror regarding the 
mysteries of J achin and Boaz, that none of our family have 
ever since joined the Society, or worn the dreadful Masonic 
insignia. 

It is known that Orpheus was torn to pieces by some justly 
indignant Thracian ladies for belonging to an Harmonic Lodge. 
^‘Let him go back to Eurydice,’' they said, ‘‘whom he is pre- 
tending to regret so.’' But the history is given in Dr. Lem- 
priere’s elegant dictionary in a manner much more forcible than 
any which this feeble pen can attempt. At once, then, and 
without verbiage, let us take up this subject-matter of Clubs. 

Clubs ought not, in my mind, to be permitted to bachelors. 
If my friend of the Cuttykilts had not our Club, the “ Union 
Jack,” to go to (I belong to the “U. J.” and nine other similar 
institutions), who knows but he never would be a bachelor at 
this present moment 1 Instead of being made comfortable, ancj 
cockered up with every luxury, as they are at Clubs, bachelors 
ought to be rendered profoundly miserable, in my opinion. 
Every encouragement should be given to the rendering their 
spare time disagreeable. There can be no more odious object, 
according to my sentiments, than young Smith, in the pride of 
health, commanding his dinner of three courses ; than middle- 
aged Jones wallowing (as I may say) in an easy padded arm- 
chair, over the last delicious novel or brilliant magazine ; or 
than old Brown, that selfish old reprobate for whom mere litera- 
ture has no charms, stretched on the best sofa, sitting on the 
second edition of The Twies^ having the Mornmg Chrotiide 
between his knees, the Herald pushed in between his coat and 
waistcoat, the Sta7tdard under his left arm, the Globe under the 
other pinion, and the Daily News in perusal. “ I’ll trouble you 
for Pmich., Mr. Wiggins,” says the unconscionable old gorman- 
dizer, interrupting our friend, who is laughing over the periodi- 
cal in question. 

This kind of selfishness ought not to be. No, no. Young 
Smith, instead of his dinner and his wine, ought to be, where } — 
at the festive tea-table, to be sure, by the side of Miss Higgs, 
sipping the bohea, or tasting the harmless muffin ; while old 
Mrs. Higgs looks on, pleased at their innocent dalliance, and 
my friend Miss Wirt, the governess, is performing Thalberg’s 
last sonata in treble X., totally unheeded, at the piano. 

Where should the middle-aged Jones be? At his time of 
life, he ought to be the father of a family. At such an hour— 


134 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


say, at nine o’clock at night — the nursery-bell should have just 
rung the children to bed. He and Mrs. J, ought to be, by 
rights, seated on each side of the fire by the dining-room table, 
a bottle of port-wine between them, not so full as it was an 
hour since. Mrs. J. has had two glasses ; Mrs. Grumble (Jones’s 
mother-in-law) has had three: Jones himself has finished the 
rest, and dozes comfortably until bedtime. 

And Brown, that old newspaper-devouring miscreant, what 
right has he at a club at a decent hour of night 1 He ought to 
be playing his rubber with Miss MacWhirter, his wife, and the 
family apothecary. His candle ought to be brought to him at 
ten o’clock, and he should retire to rest just as the young people 
were thinking of a dance. How much finer, simpler, nobler are 
the several employments I have sketched out for these gentle- 
men than their present nightly orgies at the horrid Club. 

And, ladies, think of men who do not merely frequent the 
dining-room and library, but who use other apartments of those 
liorrible dens which it is my purpose to batter down ; think of 
Cannon, the wretch, with his coat off, at his age and size, clat- 
tering the balls over the billiard-table all night, and making bets 
with that odious Captain Spot ! — think of Pam in a dark room 
with Bob Trumper, Jack Deuceace, and Charley Vole, playing, 
the poor dear misguided wretch, guinea points and five pounds 
on the rubber! — above all, think — oh, think of that den of 
abomination, which, I am told, has been established in some 
clubs, called the Smokmg-Room , — think of the debauchees who 
congregate there, the quantities of reeking whiskey-punch or 
more dangerous sherry-cobbler which they consume ; — think of 
them coming home at cock-crow and letting themselves into 
the quiet house with the Chubb key ; think of them, the hypo- 
crites, taking off their insidious boots before they slink up stairs, 
the children sleeping overhead, the wife of their bosom alone 
with the waning rushlight in the two-pair front — that chamber 
so soon to be rendered hateful by the smell of their stale cigars I 
1 am, not an advocate of violence ; I am not, by nature, of an 
incendiary turn of mind ; but if, my dear ladies, you are for 
assassinating Mr. Chubb and burning down the Club-houses in 
Bt. James’s, there is one Snob at least who will not think the 
worse of you. 

The only men who, as I opine, ought to be allowed the use 
of Clubs, are married men without a profession. The continual 
presence of these in a house cannot be thought, even by the 
most uxorious of wives, desirable. Say the girls are beginning 
to practise their music, which, in an honorable English family. 


CLUB SNOBS. 


135 


ought to occupy every young gentlewoman three hours ; it 
would be rather hard to call upon poor papa to sit in the draw- 
ing-room all that time, and listen to the interminable discords 
and shrieks which are elicited from the miserable piano during 
the above necessary operation. A man with a good ear, 
especially, would go mad, if compelled daily to submit to this 
horror. 

Or suppose you have a fancy to go to the milliner’s or to 
Howell and James’s, it is manifest, my dear Madam, that vour 
husband is much better at the Club during these operations 
than by your side in the carriage, or perched in wonder upon 
one of the stools at Shawl and Gimcrack’s, whilst young coun- 
ter-dandies are displaying their wares. 

This sort of husbands should be sent out after breakfast, 
and if not Members of Parliament, or Directors of a Railroad, 
or an Insurance Company, should be put into their Clubs, and 
told to remain there until dinner-time. No sight is more agree- 
able to my truly well-regulated mind than to see the noble 
characters so worthily employed. Whenever I pass by St. 
James’s Street, having the privilege, like the rest of the world, 
of looking in at the windows of Blight’s,” or “ Foodie’s,” or 
“ Snook’s,” or the great bay at the “ Contemplative Club,” I 
behold with respectful appreciation the figures within — the 
honest rosy old fogies, the mouldy old dandies, the waist-belts 
and glossy wigs and tight cravats of those most vacuous and 
respectable men. Such men are best there during the day- 
time, surely. When you part with them, dear ladies, think 
of the rapture consequent on their return. You have transacted 
your household affairs ; you have made your purchases ; you 
have paid your visits ; you have aired your poodle in the Park ; 
your French maid has completed the toilette which renders you 
so ravishingly beautiful by candlelight, and you are fit to make 
home pleasant to him who has been alDsent all day. 

Such men surely ought to have the Clubs, and we will not 
class them among Club Snobs therefore : — on whom let us re- 
serve our attack for the next chapter. 


136 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

CLUB SNOBS. 

Such a sensation has been created in the Clubs by the 
appearance of the last paper on Club Snobs, as can’t but be 
complimentary to me who am one of their number. 

I belong to many Clubs. The Union Jack,” the “Sash 
and Marlin-spike ” — Military Clubs. “ The True Blue,” the 
“No Surrender,” the “Blue and Buff,” the “Guy Fawkes,” 
and the “ Cato Street ” — Political Clubs. The “ Brummell ” 
and the “ Regent ” — Dandy Clubs. The “ Acropolis,” the 
“Palladium,” the “Areopagus,” the Pnyx,” the “ Pentelicus,” 
the “ Ilissus,” and the “ Poluphloisboio Thalasses ” — Literary 
Clubs. I never could make out how the latter set of Clubs 
got their names; I don’t know Greek for one, and I wonder 
how many other members of those institutions do ? 

Ever since the Club Snobs have been announced, I observe 
a sensation created on my entrance into any one of these places. 
Members get up and hustle together ; they nod, they scowl, as 
they glance towards the present Snob. “ Infernal impudent 
jackanapes ! If he shows me up,” says Colonel Bludyer, “ I’ll 
break every bone in his skin.” “ I told you what would come 
of admitting literary men into the Club,” says Ranville Ran- 
ville to his colleague. Spooney, of the Tape and Sealing-Wax 
Office. “ These people are very well in their proper places, 
and as a public man, I make a point of shaking hands with 
them, and that sort of thing ; but to have one’s privacy obtruded 
upon by such people is really too much. Come along. Spooney,” 
and the pair of prigs retire superciliously. 

As I came into the coffee-room at the “ No Surrender,” 
old Jawkins was holding out to a knot of men, who were yawn- 
ing as usual. There he stood, waving the Standard, and swag- 
gering before the fire. “What,” says he, “ did I tell Peel last 
year ? If you touch the Corn Laws, you touch the Sugar Ques- 
tion ; if you touch the Sugar, you touch the Tea. I am no 
monopolist. I am a liberal man, but I cannot forget that I 
stand on the brink of a precipice ; and if we are to have Free 
Trade, give me reciprocity. And what was Sir Robert Peel’s 
answer to me ? ‘ Mr. Jawkins,’ he said ” 

Here Jawkins’s eye suddenly turning on your humble ser- 


CLUB SNOBS. 


m 


vant, he stopped his sentence, with a guilty look — his stale 
old stupid sentence, which every one of us at the Club has 
heard over and over again. 

Jawkins is a most pertinacious Club Snob. Every day he 
is at that fireplace, holding that Standard^ of which he reads up 
the leading-article, and pours it out ore rotundo^ with the most 
astonishing composure, in the face of his neighbor, who has 
just read every word of it in the paper. Jawkins has money, 
as you may see by the tie of his neck-cloth. He passes the 
morning in swaggering about the City, in bankers’ and brokers’ 
parlors, and says : — I spoke with Peel yesterday, and his in- 
tentions are so and so. Graham and I were talking over the 
matter, and I pledge you my word of honor, his opinion coin- 
cides with mine ; and that What-d’ye-call-’um is the only meas- 
ure Government will venture on trying.” By evening-paper 
time he is at the Club : “ I can tell you the opinion of the City, 
my lord,” says he, “ and the way in which Jones Loyd looks 
at it is briefly this ; Rothschilds told me so themselves. In 
Mark Lane, people’s minds are quite made up.” He is con- 
sidered rather a well-informed man. 

He lives in Belgravia, of course ; in a drab-colored genteel 
house, and lias everything about him that is properly grave, dis- 
mal, and comfortable. His dinners are in the Morniug Herald^ 
among the parties for the week ; and his wife and daughters 
make a very handsome appearance at the Drawing-Room, once 
a year, when he comes down to the Club in his Deputy-Lieu- 
tenant’s uniform. 

He is fond of beginning a speech to you by saying, “ When 
I was in the House, I, &c.” — in fact he sat for Skittlebury for 
three weeks in the first Reformed Parliament, and was unseated 
for bribery ; since which he has three times unsuccessfully con- 
tested that honorable borough. 

Another sort of Political Snob I have seen at most Clubs, 
and that is the man who does not care so much for home poli- 
tics, but is great upon foreign affairs. I think this sort of man 
is scarcely found anywhere butva Clubs. It is for him the 
papers provide their foreign articles, at the expense of some 
ten thousand a year each. He is the man who is really seriously 
uncomfortable about the designs of Russia, and the atrocious 
treachery of Louis Philippe. He it is who expects a French 
fleet in the Thames, and has a constant eye upon the American 
President, every word of whose speech (goodness help him !) he 
reads. He knows the names of the contending leaders in Portu- 
gal, and what they are fighting about ; and it is he who says that 


THE BOOH OF SNOBS. 


13^ 

Lord Aberdeen ought to be impeached, and Lord Palmerston 
hanged, or viu versa. 

Lord Palmerston’s being sold to Russia, the exact number 
of roubles paid, by what house in the City, is a favorite theme 
with this kind of Snob. I once overheard him — it was Captain 
Spitfire, R. N., (who had been refused a ship by the Whigs, by 
the way) — indulging in the following conversation with Mr. 
Minns after dinner : 

“ Why wasn’t the Princess Scragamoffsky at Lady Palmer- 
ston’s party, Minns } Because she canH show — and why can’t 
she show } Shall I tell you Minns, why she can’t show ? The 
Princess Scragamoffsky’s back is flayed alive, Minns — I tell you 
it’s raw, sir! On Tuesday last, at twelve o’clock, three drum- 
mers of the Preobajinski Regiment arrived at Ashburnham 
House, and at half-past twelve, in the yellow drawing-room at the 
Russian Embassy, before the ambassadress and four ladies’- 
maids, the Greek Papa, and the Secretary of Embassy, Ma- 
dame de Scragamoffsky received thirteen dozen. She was 
knouted, sir, knouted in the midst of England — in Berkeley 
Square, for having said that the Grand Duchess Olga’s hair 
was red. And now, sir, will you tell me Lord Palmerston ought 
to continue Minister ? ” 

Minns : “ Good Ged ! ” 

Minns follows Spitfire about, and thinks him the greatest 
and wisest of human beings. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

CLUB SNOBS. 

Why does not some great author write The Mysteries of 
the Club-houses ; or St. James’s Street unveiled.” It would be 
a fine subject for an imaginative writer. We must all, as boys, 
remember when we went to the fair, and had spent all our 
money — the sort of awe and anxiety with which we loitered 
round the outside of the show, speculating upon the nature of 
the entertainment going on within. 

Man is a Drama — of Wonder and Passion, and Mystery 
and Meanness, and Beauty and Truthfulness, and Etcetera. 
Each Bosom is a Booth in Vanity Fair. But let us stop this 


, CLUB SNOBS. 139 

capital style, I should die if I kept it up for a column (a pretty 
thing a column all capitals would be, by the way). In a Club, 
though there mayn’t be a soul of your acquaintance in the room, 
you have always the chance of watching strangers, and specula- 
ting on what is going on within those tents and curtains of their 
souls, their coats and waistcoats. This is a never-failing sport. 
Indeed I am told there are some Clubs in the town where no- 
body ever speaks to anybody. They sit in the coffee-room, 
quite silent, and watching each other. 

Yet how little you can tell from a man’s outward demeanor ! 
There’s a man at our Club — large, heavy, middle-aged— gor 
geously dressed — rather bald-— with lackered boots — and a boa 
when he goes out ; quiet in demeapor, always ordering and con- 
suming a recherche little dinner : whom I have mistaken for Sir 
John Pocklington any time these five years, and respected as a 
man with five hundred pounds per diem ; and I find he is but a 
clerk in an office in the City, with not two hundred pounds in- 
come, and his name is Jubber. Sir John Pocklington was, on 
the contrary, the dirty little snuffy man who cried out so about 
the bad quality of the beer, and grumbled at being overcharged 
three-halfpence for a herring, seated at the next table to Jubber 
on the day when some one pointed the Baronet out to me. 

Take a different sort of mystery. I see, for instance, old 
Fawney stealing round the rooms of the Club, with glassy, 
meaningless eyes, and an endless greasy simper — he fawns on 
everybody he meets, and shakes hands with you, and blesses 
you, and betrays the most tender and astonishing interest in 
your welfare. You know him to be a quack and a rogue, and 
he knows you know it. But he wriggles on his way, and leaves 
a track of slimy flattery after him wherever he goes. Who can 
penetrate that man’s mystery 1 What earthly good can he get 
from you or me t You don’t know what is working under that 
leering tranquil mask. You have only the dim instinctive re- 
pulsion that warns you, you are in the presence of a knave — 
beyond which fact all Fawney ’s soul is a secret to you. 

I think I like to speculate on the young men best. Their 
play is opener. You know the cards in their hand, as it were. 
Take, for example, Messrs. Spavin and Cockspur. 

A specimen or two of the above sort of young fellows may 
be found, I believe, at most Clubs. They know nobody. They 
bring a fine smell of cigars into the room with them, and they 
growl together, in a corner, about sporting matters. They rec- 
ollect the history of that short period in which they have been 
ornaments of the world by names of winning horses. Aspoliti- 


140 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


cal men talk about “ the Reform year/' the year the Whigs 
went out,” and so forth, these young sporting bucks of Tarfia- 
tion's year, or Opodeldoc's year, or the year when Cataivanipus 
ran second for the Chester Cup. They play at billiards in the 
morning, they absorb pale ale for breakfast, and top up ” with 
glasses of strong waters. They read BelVs Life (and a very 
pleasant paper too, with a great deal of erudition in the an- 
swers to correspondents). They go down to Tattersall’s, and 
swagger in the Park, with their hands plunged in the pockets 
of their paletots. 

What strikes me especially in the outward demeanor of sport- 
ing youth is their amazing gravity, their conciseness of speech, 
and care-worn and moody air. In the smoking-room at the 
‘‘ Regent,” when Joe Millerson will be setting the whole room 
in a roar with laughter, you hear young Messrs. Spavin and 
Cockspur grumbling together in a corner. ‘‘ I’ll take your 
five-and-twenty to one about Brother to Bluenose,” whispers 
Spavin. Can’t do it at the price,” Cockspur says, wagging 
his head ominously. The betting-book is always present in the 
minds of those unfortunate youngsters. I think I hate that 
work even more than the Peerage.” There is some good in 
the latter — though, generally speaking, a vain record ; though 
De Mogyns is not descended from the giant Hogyn Mogyn ; 
though half the other genealogies are equally false and foolish ; 
yet the mottoes are good reading — some of them ; and the book 
itself a sort of gold-laced and liveried lackey to History, and in 
so far serviceable. But what good ever came out of, or went 
into, a betting-book ? If I could be Caliph Omar for a week, I 
would pitch every one of those despicable manuscripts into the 
flames ; from my I.ord’s, who is “ in ” with Jack Snaffle’s stable, 
and is over-reaching worse-informed rogues and swindling 
greenhorns, down to Sam’s, the butcher-boy’s, who books 
eighteenpenny odds in the tap-room, and stands to win five- 
and-twenty bob.” 

In a turf transaction, either Spavin or Cockspur would try 
to get the better of his father, and, to gain a point m the odds, 
victimize his best friends. One day we shall hear of one or 
other levanting ; an event at which, not being sporting men, 
we shall not break our hearts. See — Mr. Spavin is settling his 
toilette previous to departure ; giving a curl in the glass to his 
side-wisps of hair. Look at him ! It is only at the hulks, or 
among turf-men, that you ever see a face so mean, so knowing, 
and so gloomy. 

A much more humane being among the youthful Clubbis^ > 


Ci.UB SNOBS. 


141 

IS the Lady-killing Snob. I saw Wiggle just now in the dress 
ing-room, talking to Waggle, his inseparable. 

Waggle . — “ Ton my honor, Wiggle, she did.” 

Wiggle . — “ Well, Waggle, as you say — I own I think she did 
look at me rather kindly. We’ll see to-night at the French 
play.” 

And having arrayed their little persons, these two harmless 
young bucks go up stairs to dinner. 


CHAPTER XL. 

CLUB SNOBS. 

Both sorts of young men, mentioned in my last under the 
flippant names of Wiggle and Waggle, may be found in toler- 
able plenty, I think, in Clubs. Wiggle and Waggle are both 
idle. They come of the middle classes. One of them very 
likely makes believe to be a barrister, and the other has smart 
apartments about Piccadilly. They are a sort of second-chop 
dandies ; tliey cannot imitate that superb listlessness of de- 
meanor, and that admirable vacuous folly which distinguishes 
the noble and high-born chiefs of the race ; but they lead lives 
almost as bad (were it but for the example), and are personally 
quite as useless. I am not going to arm a thunderbolt, and 
launch it at the heads of these little Pall Mall butterflies. They 
don’t commit much public harm, or private extravagance. They 
don’t spend a thousand pounds for diamond earrings for an 
Opera-dancer, as Lord Tarquin can : neither of them ever set 
up a public-house or broke the bank of a gambling-club, like 
the young Earl of Martingale. They have good points, kind 
feelings, and deal honorably in money transactions — only in 
their characters of men of second-rate pleasure about town, they 
and their like are so utterly mean, s.elf-contented, and absurd, 
that they must be omitted in a work treating on Snobs. 

Wiggle has been abroad, where he gives you to understand 
that his success among the German countesses and Italian 
princesses, whom he met at the tables-dl hole., was perfectly ter- 
rific. His rooms are hung round with pictures of actresses and 
ballet-dancers. He passes his mornings in a fine dressing-gown, 
burning pastilles, and reading “ Don Juan,” and French novels 
(by the way, the life of the author of “ Don Juan,” as described 


142 


THE BOOK OF SHOES. 


by himself, was the model of the life of a Snob). He has two- 
penny halfpenny French prints of women with languishing eyes, 
dressed in dominoes, — guitars, gondolas, and so forth, — and 
tells you stories about them. 

“ It’s a bad print,” says he, “ I know, but iVe a reason for 
liking it. It reminds me of somebody — somebody I knew in 
other climes. You have heard of the Principessa di Monte 
Pulciano ? I met her at Rimini. Dear, dear Francesca ! 
That fair-haired, bright-eyed thing in the Bird of Paradise and 
the Turkish Simar with the love-bird on her finger, I’m sure must 
have been taken from — from somebody perhaps whom you don’t 
know — but she’s known at Munich, Waggle, my boy, — every- 
body knows the Countess Ottilia di Eulenschreckenstein. Gad, 
sir, what a beautiful creature she was when I danced with her 
on the birthday of Prince Attila of Bavaria, in ’44. Prince 
Carloman was our vis-k-vis, and Prince Pepin danced the same 
contredanse. She had a Polyanthus in her bouquet. Waggle, 7 
have it now.'"' His countenance assumes an agonized and mys- 
terious expression, and he buried his head in the sofa cushions, 
as if plunging into a whirlpool of passionate recollections. 

Last year he made a considerable sensation by having on 
his table a morocco miniature-case locked by a gold key, which 
he always wore round his neck, on which was stamped a ser- 
pent — emblem of eternity — with the letter M. in the circle. 
Sometimes he laid this upon his little morocco writing-table, as 
if it were on an altar — generally he had flowers upon it ; in the 
middle of a conversation he would start up and kiss it. He 
would call out from his bedroom to his valet, “ Hicks, bring 
me my casket ! ” 

‘‘ I don’t know' who it is,” Waggle would say. “Who docs 
know that fellow’s intrigues ! Desborough Wiggle, sir, is the 
slave of passion. I suppose you have heard the story of the 
Italian princess locked up in the Convent of Saint Barbara, at 
Rimini ? He hasn’t told you ? Then I’m not at liberty to 
speak. Or the countess, about whom he nearly had the duel 
with Prince Witikind of Bavaria } Perhaps you haven’t even 
heard about the beautiful girl at Pentonville, daughter of a most 
respectable Dissenting clerg}^man. She broke her heart when 
she found he was engaged (to a most lovely creature of high 
family, who afterwards proved false to him ), and she’s now in 
Hanw^ell.” 

Waggle’s belief in his friend amounts to frantic adoration 
“ What a genius he is, it he would but apply himself ) ” he whis- 
pers to me. “ He could be anything, sh, but for his passions. 


CLUB SNOBS. 


143 


His poems are the most beautiful things you ever saw. He’s 
written a continuation of ^ Don Juan,’ from his own adventures. 
Did you ever read his lines to Mary "i They’re superior to By- 
ron, sir — superior to Byron.” 

I was glad to hear this from so accomplished a critic as 
Waggle ; for the fact is, I had composed the verses myself for 
honest Wiggle one day, whom I found at his chambers plunged 
in thought over a very dirty old-fashioned album, in which he 
had not as yet written a single word. 

I can’t,” says he. ‘‘ Sometimes I can write whole cantos, 
and to-day not a line. Oh, Snob ! such an opportunity ! Such 
a divine creature ! She’s asked me to write verses for her 
album, and I can’t.” 

‘‘ Is she rich ? ” said I. I thought you would never marry 
any but an heiress.” 

Oh, Snob ! she’s the most accomplished, highly-connected 
creature ! — and I can’t get out a line.” 

“ How will you have it 1 ” says I. ‘‘ Hot, with sugar ? ” 

“Don’t, don’t! You trample on the most sacred feelings, 
Snob. I want something wild and tender, — like Byron. I 
want to tell her that amongst the festive halls, and that sort of 
thing, you know — I only think about her, you know — that I 
scorn the world, and am weary of it, you know, and — some- 
thing about a gazelle, and a bulbul, you know.” 

“And a yataghan to finish off with,” the present writer 
observed, and we began : — 

“TO MARY. 

“ I seem, in the midst of the crowd, 

The lightest of all ; 

My laughter rings cheery and loud, 

In banquet and ball. 

My lips hath its smiles and its sneers. 

For all men to see ; 

But my soul, and my truth, and my tears. 

Are for thee, are for thee ! ” 

“ Do you call that neat. Wiggle } ” says I. “ I declare it 
almost makes me cry myself.” 

“ Now suppose,” says Wiggle, “we say that all the world is 
at my feet — make her jealous you know, and that sort of thing 
— and that — that I’m going to travel., you know ? That per 
haps may work upon her feelings.” 

So We (as this wretched prig said) began again 

“ Around me they flatter and fawn--" 

The young and the old. 

The fairest are ready to pawn 
Xheir hearts for my gol4» 


144 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS 


They sue me — I laugh as I spurn 
The slaves at my knee, 

But in faith and in fondness I turn 
Unto thee, unto thee ! ” 

“ Now for the travelling', Wiggle my boy ! ’’ And I began, 
in a voice choked with emotion — 

“Away ! for my heart knows no rest 
Since you taught it to feel ; 

The secret must die in my breast 
I burn to reveal ; 

The passion I may not * * * ’* 

‘‘ I say, Snob ! ’’ Wiggle here interrupted the excited bard 
(just as I was about to break out into four lines so pathetic 
that they would drive you into hysterics). “ I say — ahem — 
couldn’t you say that I was — a — military man, and that there 
was some danger of my life ? ” 

“You a military man? — danger of your life? What the 
deuce do you mean ? ” 

“ Why,’^ said Wiggle, blushing a good deal, “ I told her I 
was going out — on — the — Ecuador — expedition.” 

“ You abominable young impostor,” I exclaimed. “ Finish 
the poem for yourself ! ” And so he did, and entirely out of 
all metre, and bragged about the work at the Club as his own 
performance. 

Poor Waggle fully believed in his friend’s genius, until one 
day last week he came with a grin on his countenance to the 
Club, and said, “ Oh, Snob, I’ve made such a discovery ! 
Going down to the skating to-day, whom should I see but 
Wiggle walking with that splendid woman — that lady of illus- 
trious family and immense fortune, Mary, you know, whom he 
wrote the beautiful verses about. She’s five-and-forty. She’s 
red hair. She’s a nose like a pump-handle. Her father made 
his fortune by keeping a ham-and-beef shop, and Wiggle’s going 
to marry her next week.” 

“ So much the better. Waggle, my young friend,” I ex- 
claimed. “Better for the sake of womankind that this dan- 
gerous dog should leave off lady-killing — this Blue-Beard give 
up practice. Or, better rather for his own sake. For as there 
is not a word of truth in any of those prodigious love-stories 
which you used to swallow, nobody has been hurt except 
Wiggle himself, wdiose affections will now centre in the ham- 
and-beef shop. There are people, Mr. Waggle, wdio do these 
things in earnest, and hold a good rank in the w'orld too. But 
these are not subjects for ridicule, and though certainly Snobs, 
arQ scoundrels likewise, 7"heir cases go up to a higher Court,’’ 


CLUB SNOBS. 


I4S 


CHAPTER XLI. 

CLUB SNOBS. 

Bacchus Is the divinity to whom Waggle devotes his 
especial worship. Give me wine, my boy,” says he to his 
friend Wiggle, who is prating about lovely woman ; and holds 
up his glass full of the rosy fluid, and winks at it portentously, 
and sips it and smacks his lips after it, and meditates on it, as 
if he were the greatest of connoisseurs. 

I have remarked this excessive wine-amateurship especially 
in youth. Snoblings from college. Fledglings from the army. 
Goslings from the public schools, who ornament our Clubs, are 
frequently to be heard in great force upon wine questions. 
‘‘ This bottle’s corked,” says Snobling; and Mr. Sly, the butler, 
taking it away, returns presently with the same wine in another 
jug, which the young amateur pronounces excellent. ‘‘ Hang 
champagne ! ” says Fledgling, it’s only fit for gals and children. 
Give me pale sherry at dinner, and my twenty-three claret after- 
wards.” ‘‘What’s port now.?” says Gosling; “disgusting 
thick sweet stuff — where’s the old dry wine one used to get ? ” 
Until the last twelvemonth. Fledgling drank small-beer at Doc- 
tor Swishtail’s ; and Gosling used to get his dry old port at a 
gin-shop in Westminster — till he quitted that seminary, in 
1844. 

Anybody who has looked at the caricatures of thirty years 
ago, must remember how frequently bottle-noses, pimpled faces, 
and other Bardolphian features are introduced by the designer. 
They are much more rare now (in nature, and in pictures, there- 
fore,) than in those good old times ; but there are still to be 
found amongst the youth of our Clubs lads who glory in drink- 
ing-bouts, and whose faces, quite sickly and yellow, for the 
most part are decorated with those marks which Rowland’s 
Kalydor is said to efface. “ I was so cut last night — old boy ! ” 
Hopkins says to Tomkins (with amiable confidence). “ I tell 
you what we did. We breakfasted with Jack Herring at twelve, 
and kept up with brandy and soda-water and weeds till four ; 
then we toddled into the Park for an hour ; then we dined and 
drank mulled port till half-price ; then we looked in for an 
hour at the Haymarket ; then we came back to the Club, and 


146 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


had grills and whiskey-punch till all was blue. — Hullo, waiter ! 
Get me a glass of cherry-brandy.’^ Club waiters, the civilest, 
the kindlest, the patientest of men, die under tho infliction of 
these cruel young topers. But if the reader wishes to see a 
perfect picture on the stage of this class of young fellows, I 
would recommend him to witness the ingenious comedy of 
Lo7ido7i AssuraTtce — the amiable heroes of which are repre- 
sented, not only as drunkards and five-o’clock-in-the-morning 
men, but as showing a hundred other delightful traits of 
swindling, lying, and general debauchery, quite edifying to 
witness. 

How different is the conduct of these outrageous youths to 
the decent behavior of my friend, Mr. Pap worthy ; who says 
to Poppins, the butler at the club : — 

Fapworthy , — “ Poppins, I’m thinking of dining early j is 
there any cold game in the house ? ” 

Poppms. — “There's a game-pie, sir; there’s cold grouse, 
sir ; there’s cold pheasant, sir ; there’s cold peacock, sir ; cold 
swan, sir ; cold ostrich, sir,” &c., &c. (as the case may be). 

Fapworthy. — “ Hem ! What’s your best claret now, Pop- 
pins ? — in pints I mean.” 

Foppms. — “ There’s Cooper and Magnum’s Lafite, sir ; 
there’s Lath and Sawdust’s St. Jullien, sir: Bung’s Leoville is 
considered remarkably fine ; and I think you’d like Jugger’s 
Chateau-Margaux.” 

Fapworthy . — “Hum! — hah! — well — give me a crust of 
bread and a glass of beer. I’ll only lunch ^ Poppins.” 

Captain Shindy is another sort of Club bore. He has been 
known to throw all the Club in an uproar about the quality of 
his mutton-chop. 

“ Look at it, sir ! Is it cooked, sir 1 Smell it, sir 1 Is it 
meat fit for a gentleman ? ” he roars out to the steward, who 
stands trembling before him, and who in vain tells him that the 
Bishop of Bullocksmithy has just had three from the same loin. 
All the waiters in the Club are huddled round the captain’s 
mutton-chop. He roars out the most horrible curses at John 
for not bringing the pickles ; he utters the most dreadful oaths 
because Thomas has not arrived with the Harvey sauce ; Peter 
comes tumbling with the water-jug over Jeames, who is bringing 
“ the glittering canisters with bread.” Whenever Shindy enters 
the room (such is the force of character), ever}'- table is de- 
serted, every gentleman must dine as he best may, and all those 
big footmen are in terror. 

He makes his account of it. He scolds, and is better 


CLUB SNOBS. 


waited upon in consequence. At the Club he has ten servants 
scudding about to do his bidding. 

Poor Mrs. Shindy and the children are, meanwhile, in dingy 
lodgings somewhere, waited upon by a charity-girl in pattens. 


CHAPTER XLII. 

CLUB SNOBS. 

Every well-bred English female will sympathize with the 
subject of the harrowing tale, the history of Sackville Maine, I 
am now about to recount. The pleasures of Clubs have been 
spoken of : let us now glance for a moment at the dangers of 
those institutions, and for this purpose I must introduce you to 
my young acquaintance, Sackville Maine. 

It was at a ball at the house of my respected friend, Mrs. 
Perkins, that I was introduced to this gentleman and his charm- 
ing lady. Seeing a young creature before me in a white dress, 
with white satin shoes ; with a pink ribbon, about a yard in 
breadth, flaming out as she twirled in a polka in the arms of 
Monsieur de Springbock, the German diplomatist ; with a green 
wreath on her head, and the blackest hair this individual ever 
set eyes on — seeing, I say, before me a charming young woman 
whisking beautifully in a beautiful dance, and presenting, as 
she wound and wound round the room, now a full face, then a 
three-quarter face, then a profile — a face, in fine, which in every 
way you saw it, looked pretty, and rosy, and happy, I felt. (as I 
trust) a not unbecoming curiosity regarding the owner of this 
pleasant countenance, and asked Wagley (who was standing by, 
in conversation with an acquaintance^ who was the lady in 
question ? 

Which ? says Wagley. 

“That one with the coal-black eyes,’’ I replied. 

“ Hush ! ” says he ; and the gentleman with whom he was 
talking moved off, with rather a discomfited air. 

When he was gone Wagley burst out laughing. “ Coal-black 
eyes ! ” said he ; “ you’ve just hit it. That’s Mrs. Sackville 
Maine, and that was her husband who just went away. He’s a 
coal merchant, Snob my boy, and I have no doubt Mr. Perkins’s 
Wallsends are supplied from his wharf. He is in a flaming 


148 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


furnace when he hears coals mentioned. He and his wife and 
his mother are very proud of Mrs. Sackville’s family ; she was 
a Miss Chuff, daughter of Captain Chuff, R. N. That is the 
widow ; that stout woman in crimson tabinet, battling about the 
odd trick with old Mr. Dumps, at the card-table.’’ 

And so, in fact, it was. Sackville Maine (whose name is a 
hundred times more elegant, surely, than that of Chuff ) was 
blest with a pretty wife, and a genteel mother-in-law, both of 
whom some people may envy him. 

Soon after his marriage the old lady was good enough to 
come and pay him a visit — just for a fortnight — at his pretty 
little cottage, Kennington Oval ; and, such is her affection for 
the place, has never quitted it these four years. She has also 
brought her son. Nelson Collingwood Chuff, to live with her; 
but he is not so much at home as his mamma, going as a day- 
boy to Merchant Taylors’ School, where he is getting a sound 
classical education. 

If these beings, so closely allied to his wife, and so justly 
dear to her, may be considered as drawbacks to Maine’s hap^ 
piness, what man is there that has not some things in life to 
complain of ? And when I first knew Mr. Maine, no man 
seemed more comfortable than he. His cottage was a picture 
of elegance and comfort ; his table and cellar were excellently 
and neatly supplied. There was every enjoyment, but no osten- 
tation. The omnibus took him to business of a morning ; the 
boat brought him back to the happiest of homes, where he 
would while away the long evenings by reading out the fashion- 
able novels to the ladies as they worked ; or accompany his 
wife on the flute (which he played elegantly) ; or in anyone of 
the hundred pleasing and innocent amusements of the domestic 
circle. Mrs. Chuff covered the drawing-rooms with prodigious 
tapestries, the work of her hands. Mrs. Sackville had a par- 
ticular genius of making covers of tape or net-work for these 
tapestried cushions. She could make home-made wines. She 
could make preserves and pickles. She had an album, into 
which, during the time of his courtship, Sackville Maine 'had 
written choice scraps of Byron’s and Moore’s poetry, analogous 
to his own situation, and in a fine mercantile hand. She had a 
large manuscript receipt-book — every quality, in a word, which 
indicated a virtuous and well-bred English female mind. 

And as for Nelson Collingwood,” Sackville would say, 
laughing, “we couldn’t do without him in the hoqse. If he 
didn’t spoil the tapestry we should be over-cushioned in a few 
months ; and whom could we get but him to drink Laura’s 


CLUB SNOBS. 


140 


home-made wine ? The truth is, the gents who came from 
the City to dine at the ‘‘ Oval could not be induced to drink 
it — in which fastidiousness, I myself, when I grew to be inti- 
mate with the family, confess that 1 shared. 

‘‘ And yet, sir, that green ginger has been drunk by some 
of England’s proudest heroes,” Mrs. Chuff would exclaim. 

Admiral Lord Exmouth tasted and praised it, sir, on board 
Captain Chuff’s ship, the ‘ Nebuchadnezzar,’ 74, at Algiers ; 
and he had three dozen with him in the ‘ Pitchfork ’ frigate, a 
part of which was served out to the men before he went into 
his immortal action with the ‘ Furibonde,’ Captain Choufleur, 
in the Gulf of Panama.” 

All this, though the old dowager told us the story every 
day when the wine was produced, never served to get rid of 
any quantity of it — and the green ginger, though it had fired 
Jiritish tars for combat and victory, was not to the taste of us 
peaceful and degenerate gents of modern times. 

I see Sackville now, as on the occasion when, presented by 
Wagley, I paid my first visit to him. It was in July — a Sunday 
afternoon — Sackville Maine was coming from church, with his 
wife on one arm, and his mother-in-law (in red tabinet, as usual,) 
on the other. A half-grown, or hobbadehoyish footman, so to 
speak, walked after them, carrying their shining golden prayer- 
books— the ladies had splendid parasols with tags and fringes. 
Mrs. Chuff’s great gold watch, fastened to her stomach, gleamed 
there like a ball of fire. Nelson Collingwood was in the dis- 
tance, shying stones at an old horse on Kennington Common. 
’Twas on that verdant spot we met — nor can I ever forget the 
majestic courtesy of Mrs. Chuff, as she remembered having had 
the pleasure of seeing me at Mrs. Perkins’s — nor the glance of 
scorn which she threw at an unfortunate gentleman who was 
preaching an exceedingly desultory discourse to a skeptical 
audience of omnibus-cads and nurse-maids, on a tub, as we 
passed by. I cannot help it, sir,” says she ; “ I am the 
widow of an officer of Britain’s Navy : I was taught to honor my 
Church and my King : and I cannot bear a Radical, or a Dis- 
senter.” 

With these fine principles I found Sackville Maine impressed. 
“Wagley,” said he, to my introducer, “if no better engage- 
ment, why shouldn’t self and friend dine at the ‘ Oval ? ’ Mr. 
Snob, sir, the mutton’s coming off the spit at this very minute. 
Laura and Mrs. Chuff ” (he said Laurar and Mrs. Chuff ; but 
I hate people who make remarks on these peculiarities of pro- 
nunciation,) “ will be most happy to see you ; and I can prom- 


THE BOOK OE SNOBS. 


iSO 

ise you a hearty welcome, and as good a glass of port-wine as 
any in England/’ 

“This is better than dining at the ‘ Sarcophagus,’ ” thinks 1 
to myself, at which Club Wagley and I had intended to take 
our meal ; and so we accepted the kindly invitation, whence 
arose afterwards a considerable intimacy. 

Everything about this family and house was so good-natured, 
comfortable, and well-conditioned, that a cynic would have 
ceased to growl there. Mrs. Laura was all graciousness and 
smiles, and looked to as great advantage in her pretty morning- 
gown as in her dress-‘i*obe at Mrs. Perkins’s. Mrs. Chuff fired 
off her stories about the “ Nebuchadnezzar,” 74, the action 
between the “ Pitchfork ” and the “ Furibonde ” — the heroic 
resistance of Captain Choufleur, and the quantity of snuff he 
took, &c., &c. ; which, as they were heard for the first time, 
were pleasanter than I have subsequently found them. Sack* 
ville Maine was the best of hosts. He agreed in everything 
everybody said, altering his opinions without the slightest res- 
ervation upon the slightest possible contradiction. He was 
not of those beings who would emulate a Schonbein or Friar 
Bacon, or act the part of an incendiary towards the Thames, 
his neighbor — but a good, kind, simple, honest easy, fellow — 
in love with his wife — well disposed to all the world — content 
with himself, content even with his mother-in-law. Nelson 
Collingwood, I remember, in the course of the evening, when 
whiskey-and-water was for some reason produced, grew a little 
tipsy. This did not in the least move Sackviile’s equanimity. 
“ Take him up stairs, Joseph,” said he to the hobbadehoy, “ and 
— Joseph — don’t tell his mamma.” 

What could make a man so happily disposed, unhappy ? 
.What could cause discomfort, bickering, and estrangement in a 
family so friendly and united ? Ladies, it was not my fault — it 
was Mrs. Chuff’s doing — but the rest of the tale you shall have 
on a future day. 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

CLUB SNOBS. 

The misfortune which befell the simple and good-natured 
young Sackville, arose entirely from that abominable “ Sar- 
cophagus Club and that he ever entered it was partly the 
fault of the present writer. 


CLUB SNOBS, 


151 

For seeing Mrs. Chuff, his mother-in-law, had a taste for 
the genteel — (indeed, her talk was all about Lord Collingwood, 
Lord Gambler, Sir Jahaleel Brenton, and the Gosport and 
Plymouth balls) — Wagley and I, according to our wont, trumped 
her conversation, and talked about Lords, Dukes, Marquises, 
and Baronets, as if those dignitaries were our familiar friends. 

“ Lord Sextonbury,’^ says I, “ seems to have recovered her 
ladyship’s death. He and the Duke were very jolly over their 
wine at the ‘Sarcophagus^ last night; weren’t thev, Wagley?” 

“ Good fellow, the Duke,” Wagley replied. “ Pray, ma’am ” 
(to Mrs. Chuff), “you who know the world and etiquette^ will 
you tell me. what a man ought to do in my case ? Last June, 
his Grace, his son Lord Castlerampant, Tom Smith, and myself 
were dining at the Club, when I offered the odds against 
Daddylonglegs for the Derby — forty to one, in sovereigns only. 
His Grace took the bet, and of course I won. He has never 
paid me. Now, can I ask such a greatman for a sovereign? — 
One more lump of sugar, if you please, my dear madam.” 

It was lucky Wagley gave her this opportunity to elude the 
question, for it prostrated the whole worthy family among whom 
we were. They telegraphed each other with wondering eyes. 
Mrs. Chuff’s stories about the naval nobility grew quite faint : 
and kind little Mrs. Sackville became uneasy, and went up stairs 
to look at the children — not at that young monster. Nelson 
Collingwood, who was sleeping off the whiskey-and-water—^but 
at a couple of little ones who had made their appearance at 
dessert, and of whom she and Sackville were the happy parents. 

The end of this and subsequent meetings with Mr. Maine 
was, that we proposed and got him elected as a member of the 
“ Sarcophagus Club.” 

It was not done without a deal of opposition — the secret 
having been whispered that the candidate was a coal merchant. 
You may be sure some of the proud people and most, of the 
parvenus of the Club were ready to blackball him. We com- 
bated this opposition successfully, however. We pointed out 
to the parvenus that the Lambtons and the Stuarts sold coals': 
we mollified the proud by accounts of his good birth, good 
nature, and good behavior ; and Wagley went about on the day 
of election, describing with great eloquence, the action between 
the “Pitchfork” and the “ Furibonde,” and the valor 'of Cap- 
tain Maine, our friend’s father. There was a slight mistake in 
the narrative ; but we carried our man, with only a trifling 
sprinkling of black beans in the boxes : Byles’s, of course, who 
blackballs everybody; and Bung’s, who looks down upon a 
coal merchant, liaving lately retired from the wine trade. 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


152 


Some fortnight afterwards I saw Sackville Maine under the 
following circumstances : — 

He was showing the Club to his family. He had brought 
them thither in the light-blue fly, waiting at the Club door ; 
with Mrs. Chuff’s hobbadehoy footboy on the box, by the side 
of the flyman, in a sham livery. Nelson Collingwood ; pretty 
Mrs. Sackville ; Mrs. Captain Chuff (Mrs. Commodore Chuff 
we call her), were all there ; the latter, of course, in the vermil- 
ion tabinet, which, splendid as it is, is nothing in comparison to 
the splendor of the “ Sarcophagus.” The delighted Sackville 
Maine was pointing out the beauties of the place to them. It 
seemed as beautiful as Paradise to that little party. 

The “ Sarcophagus ” displays every known variety of archi- 
tecture and decoration. The great library is Elizabethan ; the 
small library is pointed Gothic ; the dining-room is severe 
Doric ; the strangers’ room has an Egyptian look ; the drawing- 
rooms are Louis Quatorze (so called because the hideous or- 
naments displayed were used in the time of Louis Quinze) ; 
the cortile^ or hall, is Morisco-Italian. It is all over marble, 
maplewood, looking-glasses, arabesques, ormolu, and scagliola. 
Scrolls, ciphers, dragons, Cupids, polyanthuses, and other 
fk)wers writhe up the walls in every kind of cornucopiosity. 
Fancy every gentleman in Jullien’s band playing with all his 
might, and each performing a different tune ; the ornaments 
at our Club, the ‘‘ Sarcophagus;” so bewilder and affect me. 
Dazzled with emotions which I cannot describe, and which she 
dared not reveal, Mrs. Chuff, followed by her children and 
son-in-law, walked wondering amongst these blundering splen- 
dors. 

In the great library (225 feet long by 150) the only man 
Mrs. Chuff saw, was Tiggs. He was lying on a crimson-velvet 
sofa, reading a French novel of Paul de Kock. It was a very 
little book. He is a very little man. In that enormous hall 
he looked like a mere speck. As the ladies passed breathless 
and trembling in the vastness of the magnificent solitude, he 
threw a knowing, killing glance at the fair strangers, as much 
as to say, ‘‘ Ain’t I a fine fellow ” They thought so, I am 
sure. 

“ Who is that ? ” hisses out Mrs. Chuff, when we were 
about fifty yards off him at the other end of the room. 

“Tiggs! ” says I, in a similar whisper. 

“ Pretty comfortable this, isn’t it, my dear ? ” says Maine 
in a free-and-easy way to Mrs. Sackville ; “ all the magazines, 
you see — writing materials— new works — choice library, con- 


CLUB SNOBS. 


153 


taining every work of importance — what have we here ? — 
‘Dugdale’s Monasticon,’ a most valuable and, I believe, enter- 
taining book/’ 

And proposing to take down one of the books for Mrs. 
Maine’s inspection, he selected Volume VIL, to which he was 
attracted by the singular fact that a brass door-handle grew 
out of the back. Instead of pulling out a book, however, he 
pulled open a cupboard, only inhabited by a lazy housemaid’s 
broom and duster, at which he looked exceedingly discom- 
fited ; while Nelson Collingwood, losing all respect, burst into 
a roar of laughter. 

That’s the rummest book I ever saw,” says Nelson. I 
wish we’d no others at Merchant Taylors’.” 

“ Hush, Nelson ! ” cries Mrs. Chuff, and we went into the 
other magnificent apartments. 

How they did admire the drawing-room hangings, (pink 
and silver brocade, most excellent wear for London,) and cal- 
culated the price per yard ; and revelled on the luxurious sofas ; 
and gazed on the immeasurable looking-glasses 

Pretty well to shave by, eh ? ” says Maine to his mother- 
in-law. (He was getting more abominably conceited every 
minute.) Get away, Sackville,” says she, quite delighted, 
and threw a glance over her shoulder, and spread out the wings 
of the red tabinet, and took a good look at herself ; so did 
Mrs. Sackville — just one, and I thought the glass reflected a 
very smiling, pretty creature. 

But what’s a woman at a looking-glass ? Bless the little 
dears, it’s their place. They fly to it naturally. It pleases 
them, and they adorn it. What I like to see, and watch with 
increasing joy and adoration, is the Club men at the great 
looking-glasses. Old Gills pushing up his collars and grin- 
ning at his own mottled face. Hulker looking solemnly at his 
great person, and tightening his coat to give himself a waist. 
Fred Minchin simpering by as he is going out to dine, and 
casting upon the reflection of his white neckcloth a pleased 
moony smile. What a deal of vanity that Club mirror has re- 
flected, to be sure ! 

Well, the ladies went through the whole establishment with 
perfect pleasure. They beheld the coffee-rooms, and the litth 
tables laid for dinner, and the gentlemen who were taking 
their lunch, and old Jav;kins thundering away as usual ; they 
saw the reading-rooms, and the rush for he evening papers ; 
they saw the kitchens — those wonders of art — where the CheJ 
was presiding over twenty pretty kitchen-maids^ and ten thPU- 


154 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


sand shining saucepans : and they got into the light-blue fly 
perfectly bewildered with pleasure. 

Sackville did not enter it, though little Laura took the back 
seat on purpose, and left him the front place alongside of Mrs. 
Chuff’s red tabinet. 

We have your favorite dinner,” says she, in a timid voice ; 
“won’t you come, Sackville 't ” 

“ I shall take a chop here to-day, my dear,” Sackville re- 
plied. “ Home, James.” And he went up the steps of the 
“ Sarcophagus,” and the pretty face looked very sad out of the 
carriage, as the blue fly drove away. 


CHAPTER XLIV 

CLUB SNOBS. 

Why — why did I and Wagley ever do so cruel an action as 
to introduce young Sackville Maine into that odious “ Sarcoph- 
aigus ! ’■ Let our imprudence and his example be a warning 
to other gents ; let his fate and that of his poor wife be re- 
membered by every British female. The consequences of his 
entering the Club were as follow : — 

One of the first vices the unhappy wretch acquired in this 
abode of frivolity was that of smokmg. Some of the dandies 
of the Club, such as the Marquis of Macabaw, Lord Doodeen, 
and fellows of that high order, are in the habit of indulging in 
this propensity up stairs in the billiard-rooms of the “ Sarcoph- 
agus ” — and, partly to make their acquaintance, partly from 
a natural aptitude for crime, Sackville Maine followed them, 
and became an adept in th^ odious custom. Where it is in- 
troduced into a family I need not say how sad the conse- 
quences are, both to the furniture and the morals. Sackville 
smoked in his dining-room at home, and caused an agony to 
his wife and mother-in-law which I do not venture to describe. 

He then became a professed bilUard-player., wasting hours 
upon that amusement ; betting freely, playing tolerably, losing 
awfully to Captain Spot and Col. Cannon. He played matches 
of a hundred games with these gentlemen, and would not only 
continue until four or five o’clock in the morning at this work, 
but would be found at the Club of a forenoon, indulging him- 
self to the detriment of his' business^ the ruin of his health, and 
the neglect of his wife, 


CLUB SNOBS, 


ISS 

From billiards to whist is but a step — and when a man gets 
to whist and five pounds on the rubber, my opinion is, that it is 
all up with him. How was the coal business to go on, and the 
connection of the firm to be kept up, and the senior partner 
always at the card-table ? 

Consorting now with genteel persons and Pall Mall bucks, 
Sackville became ashamed of his snug little residence in Kem 
nington Oval, and transported his family to Pimlico, where, 
though Mrs. Chuff, his mother-in-law, was at first happy, as the 
quarter was elegant and near her Sovereign, poor little Laura 
and the children found a woeful difference. Where were her 
friends who came in with their work of a morning? — At 
Kennington and in the vicinity of Clapham. Where were her 
children’s little playmates 1 — on Kennington Common. The 
great thundering carriages that roared up and down the drab- 
colored streets of the new quarter, contained no friends for the 
sociable little Laura. The children that paced the squares, 
attended by a botifie or a prim governess, were not like those 
happy ones that flew kites, or played hop-scotch, on the well- 
beloved old Common. And ah ! what a difference at Church 
too ! — between St. Benedict's of Pimlico, with open seats, ser- 
vice in sing-song — tapers — albs — surplices — garlands and pro- 
cessions, and the honest old ways of Kennington ! The foot- 
men, too, attending St. Benedict’s were so splendid and enor- 
mous, that James, Mrs. Chuff’s boy, trembled amongst them, 
and said he would give warning rather than carry the books 
to that church any more. 

The furnishing of the house was not done without expense. 

And, ye gods! what a difference there was between Sack? 
ville’s dreary French banquets in Pimlico, and the jolly dinners 
at the Oval! No more leg-of-mutton, no more of “ the best 
port-wine in England;” but ent7ies on plate, and dismal two- 
penny champagne, and waiters in gloves, and the club bucks 
for compaii}^ — among whom Mrs. Chuff was uneasy and Mrs.. 
Sackville quite silent. 

Not that he dined at home often. The wretch had become 
a perfect epicure, and dined commonly at the Club with the 
gormandizing clique there ; with old Dr. Maw, Colonel Cram- 
ley (who is as lean as a greyhound and has jaws like a jack), 
and the rest of them. Here you might see the wretch tippling 
Sillery champagne and gorging himself with French viands ; 
and I often look with sorrow from my table, (on which cold 
meat, the Club small-beer, and a half pint of Marsala from the 
modest banquet,) and sighed to think it was my work. 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS. 


And there were other beings present to my repentant 
thoughts. Where’s his wife, thought I.? Where’s poor, good, 
kind little Laura ? At this very moment — it’s about the nursery 
bed-time, and while yonder good-for-nothing is swilling his 
wine — the little ones are at Laura’s knee lisping their prayers ; 
and she is teaching them to say — Pray God bless Papa.” 

When she has put them to bed, her day’s occupation is 
gone ; and she is utterly lonely all night, and sad, and waiting 
for him. 

Oh, for shame ! Oh, for shame ! Go home, thou idle 
tippler. 

How Sackville lost his health : how he lost his business ; 
how he got into scrapes ; how he got into debt ; how he be- 
came a railroad director ; how the Pimlico house was shut up ; 
how he went to Boulogne, — all this I could tell, only I , am too 
much ashamed of my part of the transaction. They returned 
to England, because, to the surprise of everybody, Mrs. Chuff 
came down with a great sum of money (which nobody knew 
she had saved), and paid his liabilities. He is in England ; 
but at Kennington. His name is taken off the books of the 
“ Sarcophagus ” long ago. When we meet, he crosses over to 
the other side of the street ; and I don’t call, as I should be sorry 
to see a look of reproach or sadness upon Laura’s sweet face. 

Not, however, all evil, as I am proud to think, has been the 
influence of the Snob of England upon Clubs in general : — 
Captain Shindy is afraid to bully the waiters any more, and 
eats his mutton-chop without moving Achernon. Gobemouche 
does not take more than two papers at a time for his private 
reading. Tiggs does not ring the bell and cause the library- 
waiter to walk about a quarter of a mile in order to give him 
Vol. II., which lies on the next table. Growler has ceased to 
walk from table to table in the coffee-room, and inspect what 
people are having for dinner. Trotty Veck takes his own 
umbrella from the hall — the cotton one ; and Sydney Scraper’s 
paletot lined with silk has been brought back by Jobbins, who 
entirely mistook it for his own. Waggle has discontinued telling 
stories about the ladies he has killed. Snooks does not any 
more think it gentlemanlike to blackball attorneys. Snuffler no 
longer publicly spreads out his great red cotton pocket-hand- 
kerchief before the fire, for the admiration of two hundred 
gentlemen ; and if one Club Snob has been brought back to 
the paths of rectitude, and if one poor John has been spared a 
journey or a scolding — say, friends and brethren, if these 
sketches of Club Snobs have been in vain. 


CHAPTER LAST 


157 


CHAPTER LAST. 

How it is that we have come to No. 45 of this present series 
of papers, my dear friends and brother Snobs, I hardly know — 
but for a whole mortal year have we been together, prattling, 
and abusing the human race ; and were we to live for a hun- 
dred years more, I believe there is plenty of subject for con- 
versation in the enormous theme of Snobs. 

/The national mind is awakened to the subject. Letters 
pour in every day, conveying marks of sympathy ; directing the 
attention of the Snob of England to races of Snobs yet unde- 
scribed. Where are your Theatrical Snobs; your Commercial 
Snobs ; your Medical and Chirurgical Snobs ; your Official 
Snobs ; your Legal Snobs ; your Artistical Snobs ; your Musical 
Snobs ; your Sporting Snobs ? ” write my esteemed correspond- 
ents. / ‘‘ Surely you are not going to miss the Cambridge 
Chancellor election, and omit showing up your Don Snobs, who 
are coming, cap in hand, to a young Prince of six-and-twenty, 
and to implore him to be the chief of their renowned Uni- 
versity ! writes a friend who seals with the signet of the Cam 
and Isis Club. “Pray, pray,’’ cries another, “ now the Operas 
are opening, give us a lecture about Omnibus Snobs.” Indeed, 
I should like to write a chapter about the Snobbish Dons very 
much, and another about the Snobbish Dandies. Of my dear 
Theatrical Snobs I think with a pang; and I can hardly break 
away from some Snobbish artists, with whom I have long, long 
intended to have a palaver. 

But what’s the use of delaying ? When these were done 
there would be fresh Snobs to portray. The labor is endless. 
No single man could complete it. Here are but fifty-two bricks 
— and a pyramid to build. It is best to stop. As Jones always 
quits the room as soon as he has said his good thing, — as Cin- 
cinnatus and General Washington both retired into private life 
in the height of their popularity, — as Prince Albert, when he 
laid the first stone of the Exchange, left the bricklayers to com- 
plete that edifice and went home to his royal dinner, — as the 
poet Bunn comes forward at the end of the season, and with 
feelings too tumultuous to describe, blesses his kyind friends 
over the footlights : so, friends, in the flush of conquest and the 
splendor of victory, amid the shouts and the plaudits of a 


THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 


^55 

people — triumphant yet modest — the Snob of England bids ye 
farewell. 

But only for a season. Not forever. No, no. There is 
one celebrated author whom I admire very much — who has 
been taking leave of the public any time these ten years in his 
prefaces, and always comes back again, when everybody is glad 
to see him. How can he have the heart to be saying good-by 
so often ? I believe that Bunn is affected when he blesses the 
people. Parting is always painful. Even the familiar bore is 
dear to you. I should be sorry to shake hands even with Jaw- 
kins for the last time. I think a well-constituted convict, on 
coming home from transportation, ought to be rather sad when 
he takes leave of Van Diemen’s Land. When the curtain goes 
down on the last night of a pantomime, poor old clown must be 
very dismal, depend on it. Ha ! with what joy he rushes for- 
ward on the evening of the 26th of December next, and says — 
How are you ? — Here we are ! ” But I am growing too senti- 
mental : — to return to the theme. 

The national mind is awakened to the subject of 
SNOBS. The word Snob has taken a place in our honest English 
vocabulary. We can’t define it, perhaps. We can’t say what 
it is, any more than we can define wit, or humor, or humbug ; 
but we knouf what it is. Some weeks since, happening to have 
the felicity to sit next to a young lady at a hospitable table, 
where poor old Jawkins was holding forth in a very absurd 

pompous manner, I wrote upon the spotless damask S B,” 

and called my neighbor’s attention to the little remark. 

That young lady smiled. She knew it at once. Her mind 
straightway filled up the two letters concealed by apostrophic 
reserve, and I read in her assenting eyes that she knew Jaw- 
kins was a Snob. You seldom got them to make use of the 
word as yet, it is true ; but it is inconceivable how pretty an 
expression their little smiling mouths assume when they speak 
it out. If any young lady doubts, just let her go up to her own 
room, look at herself steadily in the glass, and say Snob.” If 
she tries this simple experiment, my life for it, she will smile, 
and own that the word becomes her mouth amazingly. A pretty 
little round word, all composed of soft letters, with a hiss at 
the beginning, just to make it piquant, as it were. 

Jawkins, meanwhile, went on blundering, and bragging, and 
boring, quite unconsciously. And so he will, no doubt, go on 
roaring and braying to the end of time, or at least so long as 
people will hear hini You cannot alter the nature of men and 


CHAPTER LAST. 


159 

Snobs by any force of satire ; as, by laying ever so many stripes 
on a donkey’s back, you can’t turn him into a zebra. 

But we can warn the neighborhood that the person whom 
they and Jawkins admire is an impostor. We can apply the 
Snob test to him, and try whether he is conceited and a quack, 
whether pompous and lacking humility — whether uncharitable 
and proud of his narrow soul. How does he treat a great man 
— how regard a small one ? How does he comport himself in 
the presence of His Grace the Duke ; and how in that of Smith, 
the tradesman } 

And it seems to me that all English society is cursed by this 
mammoniacal superstition ; and that we are sneaking and bow- 
ing and cringing on the one hand, or bullying and scorning 6h 
the other, from the lowest to the highest. My wife speaks 
with great circumspection — “proper pride,” she calls it — to 
our neighbor the tradesman’s lady : and she, I mean' Mrs. 
Snob, — Eliza — would give one of her eyes to go to court, as her 
cousin, the Captain’s wife, did. She, again, is a good soul, 
but it costs her agonies to be obliged to confess that we live 
in Upper Thompson Street, Somer’s Town. And though I 
believe in her heart Mrs. Whiskerington is fonder of us than of 
her cousins, the Smigsmags, you should hear how she goes on 
prattling about Lady Smigsmag, — and “ I said to Sir John, my 
dear John;” and about the Smigsmags’ house and parties in 
^ Hyde Park Terrace. 

Lady Smigsmag, when she meets Eliza,— who is a sort of a 
kind of a species of a connection of the family, pokes out one 
finger, which my wife is at liberty to embrace in the most cor- 
dial manner she can devise. But oh, you should see her lady- 
ship’s behavior on her first-chop dinner-party days, when Lord 
and Lady Longears come 1 

I can bear it no longer — this diabolical invention of gentility 
which kills natural kindliness and honest friendship. Proper 
pride, indeed ! Rank and precedence, forsooth! The table 
of ranks and degrees is a lie, and should be flung into the fire. 
Organize rank and precedence 1 that was well for the masters 
of ceremonies of former ages. Come forward, some great 
marshal, and organize Equality in society, and your rod shall 
swallow up all the juggling old court gold-sticks. If this is not 
gospel-truth — if the world does not tend to this — if heredityy- 
great-man worship is not a humbug and an idolatry— let us 
have the Stuarts back again, and crop the Free Press’s ears in 
the pillory. 

If ever our cousins, the Smigsmags, asked me to meet Lord 


The book of snobs. 


160 

Longears, x would like to take an opportunity after dinner and 
say, in the most good-natured way in the world : — Sir, Fortune 
makes you a present of a number of thousand pounds every 
year. The ineffable wisdom of our ancestors has placed you 
as a chief and hereditary legislator over me. Our admirable 
Constitution (the pride of Britons and envy of surrounding 
nations) obliges me to receive you as my senator, superior, and 
guardian. Your eldest ^son, Fitz-Heehaw, is sure of a place in 
Parliament ; your younger sons, the De Brays, will kindly con- 
descend to be post-captains and lieutenant-colonels, and to 
represent us in foreign courts or to take a good living when it 
falls convenient. These prizes our admirable Constitution (the 
pride and envy of, &c.) pronounces to be your due : without 
count of your dulness, your vices, your selfishness ; or your 
entire incapacity and folly. Dull as you may be (and we have 
as good a right to assume that my lord is an ass, as the other 
proposition, that he is an enlightened patriot) ; — dull, I say, as 
you may be, no one wall accuse you of such monstrous folly, as 
to suppose that you are indifferent to the good luck which you 
possess, or have any inclination to part with it. No — and 
patriots as we are, under happier circumstances. Smith and I, 

I have no doubt, were we dukes ourselves, would stand by our 
order. 

We would submit good-naturedly to sit in a high place. We 
would acquiesce in that admirable Constitution (pride and envy ^ 
of, &c.) which made us chiefs and the world our inferiors ; we 
would not cavil particularly at that notion of hereditary supe- 
riority which brought so many simple people cringing to our 
knees. Maybe we would rally round the Corn-Laws ; we would 
make a stand against the Reform Bill ; we would die rather 
than repeal the Acts against Catholics and Dissenters ; we 
would, by our noble system of class-legislation, bring Ireland 
to its present admirable condition. 

But Smith and I are not Earls as yet. We don’t believe 
that it is for the interest of Smith’s army that young De Bray 
should be a Colonel at five-and-twenty, — of Smith’s diplomatic 
relations that Lord Longears should go Ambassador to Con- 
stantinople, — of our politics, that Longears should put his 
hereditary foot into them. 

This bowing and cringing Smith believes to be the act of 
Snobs j and he will do all in his might and main to be a Snob 
and to submit to Snobs no longer. To Longears he says, 

“ We can’t help seeing, Longears, that we are as good as you. 
We can spell even better ; we can think quite as rightly ; we 


CITAPTER LAST, 


i6i 


will not have you for our master, or black your shoes any more. 
Your footmen do it, but they are paid ; and the fellow who 
comes to get a list of the company when you give a banquet or 
a dancing breakfast at Longueoreille House, gets money from 
the newspapers for performing that service. But for us, thank 
you for nothing, Longears my boy, and we don’t wish to pay 
you any more than we owe. We will take olf our hats to VVel- 
lington because he is Wellington ; but to you — who are you ? ’’ 

I am sick of Coiu't Circulars, I loathe haut-ton intelligence. 
I believe such words as Fashionable, Exclusive, Aristocratic, 
and the like, to be wdcked, unchristian epithets, that ought to 
be banished from honest vocabularies. A Court system that 
sends men of genius to the second table, I hold to be a Snob- 
bish system. A society that sets up to be polite, and ignores 
Arts and Letters, I hold to be a Snobbish society. You, who 
despise your neighbor, are a Snob ; you, who forget your own 
friends, meanly to follow after those of a higher degree, are a 
Snob ; you, who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for 
your calling, are a Snob ; as are you who boast of your pedi- 
gree, or are proud of your wealth. 

To laugh at such is Mr. Funchls business. May he laugh 
honestly, hit no foul blow and tell the truth when at his very 
broadest grin — never forgetting that if Fun is good, Truth is 
still better, and Love best of all. 

II 


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LOVELL’S LIBRARY-CATALOGUE. 


113. More Words About the Bible, i 163. 

by Rev. Jas. S. Bush — 20 164. 

114. Monsieur Lecoq, GaboriauPt. I. .20 : 165. 

Monsieur Lecoq, Pt. II 20 166. 

115. An Outline of Irish History, by 

Justin II. McCarthy 10 ; 167. 

116. TheLerouge Case, by Gaboriau. .20 ; 

117. Paul CUfford, by Lord Lytton. . .20 j 168. 

1 18. A New Lease of Life, by About . . 20 

119. Bourbon Lilies 20 | 169. 

120. Other People's Money, Gaboriau.20 KO. 

121. The Lady of Lyons, Lytton... 10 i 171. 

122. Ameline de Bourg 15 I 172. 

123. A Sea Queen, by W. Russell 20 173. 

124. The Ladies Lindores, by Mrs. 174. 

Oliphant 20 

125. Haunted Hearts, by Simpson. ...10 175 

126. Loys, Lord Beresford, by The 176 

127. Under Two Flags, Ouida, Pt. i..l5 178. 

Under Two Flags, Pt. II 15 179. 

128. Money, by Lord Lytton 10 180. 

129. In Peril of His Life, by Gaboriau.20 181. 

130. India, by Max Miiller 20 182. 

131. Jets and Flashes 20 183. 

132. Moonshine and Marguerites, by 181. 

The Duchess... 10 

133. Mr. Scarborough’s Family, by 185. 

Anthony Trollope, Part 1 15 

Mr, Scarborough's Family, Pt 11.15 

134. Arden, by A. Mary F. Robin8on.l5 

135. The Tower of Percemont 20 186. 

136. Yolande, by Wm. Black 20 

137. Cruel London, by Joseph patton.20 187. 

138. The Gilded Clique, by Gaboriau.20 188. 

139. Piko County Folks, E. H. Mott. .20 189. 

140. Cricket on the Hearth 10 

141. Henry Esmond, by Thackeray. .20 190. 

142. Strange Adventures of a Phae- 191. 

ton, ny Wm. Black 20 192. 

143. Denis Duval, by Thackeray 10 193. 

144. Old Curiosity Snop,Dicken8,Pt 1.15 ( 

Old Curiosity Shop, Part II. . . .15 I 194. 

145. Ivanhoe, by Scott, Parti... 15 I 195. 

Ivanhoe, by Scott, Part II 15 j 

146. White Wings, by Wm. Black.. 20 j 196. 

147. The Sketch Book, by Irving 20 ; 197. 

148. Catherine, by W. LI. Thackeray.lO i 

149. Janet’s Repentance, by Eliot.... 10 j 198. 

150. Barnaby Rudge, Dickens, Pt I. .15 199. 

Barnaby Rudge, Part II 15 i 

151. Felix Holt, b/ George Eliot 20 

152. Richelieu, by Lord Lytton ..10 

153. Sunrise, by Wm. Black, Part I.. 15 200. 
Sunrise, by Wm. Black. Part 11.15 201, 

154. Tour of the World in 80 Days.. 20 

155. Mystery of Orcival. Gaboriau 20 

156. Lovel, the Widower, by W. M. 202. 

Thackeray 10 203. 

157. Romantic Adventures of a Milk- - 204. 

maid, by Thomas Hardy.- 10 205. 

158. David Copperfield, Dickens, Pt 1.20 

David Copperfield, Part IT. 20 206. 

160. Rienzi, by Lord Lytton, Part I. .15 207. 
Rienzi, by Lord Lytton, Part II. 15 

161. Promise of Marriage, Gaboriau. .10 208. 

162. Faith and Uufaith, by The 

Duchess 20 209. 


The Happy Man, by Lover... 10 
Barry Lyndon, by Thackeray — 20 

Eyre’s Acquittal 10 

Twenty Thousand Leagues Un- 
der the Sea, by Jules Verne 20 

Anti-Slavery Days, by James 

Freeman Clarke 20 

Beauty’s Daughters, by The 

Duchess 20 

Beyond the Sunrise 20 

Hard Times, by Charles Dicken8.20 
Tom Cringle’s Log, by M. Scott.. 20 
Vanity Fair, by W.M. Thackeray. 20 
Underground Russia, Stepniak,.20 
Middlemarch, by Elliot, PtI — 20 

Middlemarch, Part II 20 

SirTom, by Mrs. Oliphant 20 

Pelham, by Lord Lytton 20 

The Story of Ida 10 

Madcap Violet, by Wm. Black. .20 

The Little Pilgrim 10 

Kilmeny, by Wm. Black 20 

Whist, or Bumblepuppy? 10 

The Beautiful Wretch, Black 20 

Her Mother’s Sin, by B. M. Clay.20 
Green Pastures and Piccadilly, 

by Wm. Black 20 

The Mysterious Island, by Jules 

Verne, Part I ■ 15 

The Mysterious Island, Part II. . 15 
The Mysterious Island, Part III. 15 
Tom Brown at Oxford, Part I. . .15 
Tom Brown at Oxford, Part II . . 15 
Thicker tbau Water, by J. Payu.20 
lu Silk Attire, by Wm. Black. . .20 
Scottish Chiefs. Jane Porter, Pt.I.20 

Scottish Chiefs, Part II 20 

Willy Reilly, by Will Carleton..20 
The Nautz Family, by Shelley.20 
Great Expectations, by Dicken8.20 
Pendenni8,by Thackeray, Part 1.20 
Pendenni8,by Thackeray, Part 11.20 

Widow Bedott Papers 20 

Daniel Deronda,Geo Eliot,Pl. 1.5.0 

Daniel Deronda, Part II 20 

AltioraPeto, by Oliphant 20 

By the Gate of the Sea, by David 

Christie Murray 15 

Tales of a Traveller, by Irving. . .20 
Life and Voyages of Columbus, 
by Washington Irving, Part I. .20 
Life and Voyages of Columbus, 
by Washington Irving, Part 11.20 

The Pilgrim’s Progresi 20 

Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles 

Dickens, Part I. . . 20 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Part II 20 

Theophrastus Such. Geo. Eliot. . .20 
Disarmed, M. Betham-Edwartls..l5 
Eugene Aram, by Lord Lytton. 20 
The Spanish Gypsy and Other 

Poems, by George Eliot 20 

Cast Up by the Sea. Baker 20 

Mill on the Floss, Eliot. Pt.I...15 

Mill on the Floss, Part II 15 

Brother Jacob, and Mr. Gilfil's 
Love Story, by George Eliot. . .10 
Wrecks in the Sea of Life 90 


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The book of snobs 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863 
6817131 

The Library of Congress 

[43] bookofsnobsOOthac_l 



